


Project Star-Eater

by d0ct0rd0ct0r



Series: Celestucky [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action Scenes, Alternate Universe, Autistic Bucky, HoH Steve, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Medical Trauma, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Trauma, deaf steve
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 08:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 31,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3603447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d0ct0rd0ct0r/pseuds/d0ct0rd0ct0r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers has blood made of galaxies and nightmares about the black hole that replaced his best friend. Bucky Barnes is a patchwork of human flesh and skin made from the night sky, and there's a void in him that wants to engulf him. If being a supersoldier means being a hybrid of space and humanity, what does that do to a person? [In which everything is different because Steve is literally part-star.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i'm coming for you and i'm making war

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for: nightmares, gun violence, violence, v mild harmful-to-oneself behavior

The first time Steve sees the abomination of an assassin in person, he's legitimately scared. Drop to the floor, army crawl scared. Because it--they? he?--moves like it's immune to gravity, like it's a lightweight android in half a human suit. It pulls whatever's in its way--people and objects alike--and crushes them with a surreal strength. And Steve works with superheroes, men in metal suits that can lift as much as him, gods and monsters of men with unreal abilities--but the way the Winter Soldier moves, in person, is unreal. 

Steve would have continued to think of his opponent that way, but he's watching the way it climbs the hood of an armored van and slings a rifle over its shoulder. He watches the clinical shots, one after another, assailants falling in waves. He's still watching when Natasha pulls on his shoulder and makes him duck. A bullet flies over his head, missing by inches. Steve signs his thanks and rolls to the right. Tasha goes left. Time to see who or what it's after. 

More bullets zip past Steve, and he starts running faster, moving side to side in arcs and zig-zags to try and lose the attacker. He spots a fire escape and starts climbing it, hand over hand over foot over foot, moving as fast as he physically can. His chest is tighter than it's been in years. At the top, he rolls off the ladder and raises the spare gun Tasha gave him, backing up several feet, but keeping several others between him and the edge of the roof. 

Its left arm reaches the ledge first, shining in the mid-afternoon sun. Whatever it is pulls itself up, fingers digging into the concrete. Steve gets low and makes himself as small as possible, watching it rise. All-black eyes appear under dark, sweat-stringy hair as it climbs up and settles on its haunches. Its face means murder, twisted in disgust as it eyes Steve from top to bottom. Crouching across from him, only some twenty feet away, it pauses. It pulls off the dark mask covering the lower half of its face, revealing a crooked grin and completing a picture Steve hasn't seen in years. 

That face makes the world drop out from under Steve. And even with those eyes, even with the blackened scars along his cheeks, even with the patches of uneven shiny skin, even with the sheer delight of having cornered Steve on his face, Steve's able to recognize him. 

"Bucky," he says, the name setting off small explosions in his head. "Bucky," he repeats, louder, because the assassin doesn't seem to recognize the name. Steve drops the gun and moves into a defensive crouch. "I'm not here to hurt you--" 

"I am." 

There's a bright blast of pain as he charges Steve, punching him square in the stomach. Even with a hand made of flesh and bone, burning cold as dry ice, Steve thinks he hears a few cracks from his side. He rolls back, slapping the ground with his left hand to absorb the shock. His right hand cradles the bruise forming beneath his ribs. Then, Bucky is right in front of him again, above him, with the worst kind of look on his face. It's a look that means, "I hate you." It's a look that means, "I'm going to kill you." It's a look that Steve hasn't even seen in his nightmares. 

Bucky--or not-Bucky, as the case may be--aims another punch square at Steve's head, this time, with the metal arm. Steve barely manages to roll out of the way, head rattling from the dent not-Bucky leaves in the concrete. He pushes himself up on his hands and knees, moving into a crouch, one hand back to nursing his ribs. His other hand reaches out, palm flat, a surrender. "Bucky, stop. You don't want to do this." 

"Who 're you talking to?" he asks, in the same faux-innocent, half-mischievous tone Steve associates with being teased about having a crush. Not-Bucky walks forward, fists balled at his side. He looks over Steve, hiding them in shadow, looking down at him. In the dark, Steve can make out the faint glimmer of distant stars in not-Bucky's eyes, in the shiny parts of the scars on his face and the dark splashes that look like cellophane over burns. Even beaten to hell with black hole eyes and intent to kill in cold blood, the Soldier looks like Bucky. Steve wants to vomit, and he's not sure if it's from the broken rib or heartache. 

"What did they do to you?" Steve asks, voice going faint. He can't make himself move. His world feels upside down, and moving would knock him loose, send him tumbling into the endless sky ahead. Is that not-Bucky's plan? Kick Steve down, drop him into a bottomless blue pit, just like he'd done to Bucky? 

A rush of silver out of the corner of Steve's eye alerts him to the fist heading toward his face. He blocks it with his forearm, but still ends up with a bruise on the side of his head, along with two on his arm. One from the impact, where metal met skin, and one from the place it hit his head. Steve rolls to the side and pushes out to sweep the Soldier, knocking him down and using the momentum to stand up. Not-Bucky turns the graceless fall into a roll, standing right out of it, yards away from Steve. 

Steve isn't sure which of them is the worse for wear. Bucky looks old--not in his face, not in his mannerism or appearance, but in his being, like something weathered him harder in seventy years apart. What did they do to him? He hardly even looks like Bucky at all, but now that Steve's seen his full face, there's no mistaking him for anyone else. Steve can pick out the familiar lines on his long-ago friend that move the same exact way. 

"Bucky, please--you're my friend--"

The Soldier responds by kicking himself forward into the air, coming at Steve with a flurry of punches. Some of them land. Steve blocks some, too, but not-Bucky still manages to push him to the edge of the roof. Steve can feel the open air at his back, the ten storey drop. He could probably survive it, sure, but it would hurt like hell. And if the Winter Soldier moved fast enough, Steve wouldn't survive. Not after a fall like that and a clean shot through the head. 

"Bucky," he pleads, "don't--" 

"Why do you keep using that name?" it asks in Bucky's voice, with Bucky's face. "Who the hell is Bucky?"

And then Steve's falling, falling, falling. 

* 

He lands in his bed with the wind knocked out of him, scrambling awake from the hypnagogic jerk. There's sweat all over his face and back. Steve sits up and turns, legs falling on the floor next to his bed. The stars in him burn hot and his mind is a rapid flashing montage of fight after fight, bruise after bruise, different angles of the same look on someone else's face. He buries his face in his shirt, using it to mop up the sweat before tossing it to the floor. 

Steve groans and gets to his feet, heart pounding. He's not going to sleep for a while after that. Might as well do something to soothe the aching memories. He doesn't check the time as he stands and walks to the bathroom, not even bothering to turn on lights as he goes. His eyes are good enough to see well in the dark. In the mirror, they offer up a faint glow, just brighter than the glow clinging to the rest of his body. Steve gets in the cold shower and sits there. 

After a few minutes of letting the water take care of the stickiness covering him, Steve leans on the wall and lets himself go. The tears start to fall, coming down his face in thick bunches, virtually indistinguishable from the shower water pouring all over him. It's a cold shower, and he's in an apartment anyway, so Steve stands there and lets it run over him for another hour. He's dripping and cried out, face red and body temporarily soothed, when he gets out. 

Steve ruffles his hair under the towel and dries off a step at a time, facing away from the mirror. He hasn't been sleeping much since--since that, and his reflection has taken to morphing into not-Bucky's when he's least expecting it, aiming punches that should break through glass and Steve crouching on the floor even though nothing's happening. His days are short and his nights are long. He barely remembers to eat, so he eats a lot at a time to make up for it. Steve's turned into a messy-haired, unshaven mess and he's sick of it. 

The only way to fix it, he knows, is to search out Bucky, or whatever's inhabiting the body that used to belong to Bucky. The Winter Soldier was probably Bucky at some point. He's read the experiment logs and reports. He knows what HYDRA did to Bucky and it burns him inside. There had to be some way he could've known back then, some way to force himself to tell his commanding officers about the talks of making another supersoldier with a black hole instead of stars. But he didn't. Steve is stuck in the future, with no way to warn Bucky that the hypotheticals he'd overheard would eventually come to undo him. 

Steve hits his head against the wall, the same way Bucky did when they were kids and he screwed something up, and closes his eyes. No use regretting the past, even if it was only yesterday. Steve only has now, and he intends to use it to its fullest extent. 

To find Bucky.


	2. so we can go back and play pretend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve makes a visit, and Bucky has privacy issues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: brief discussion of human experimentation, medical abuse, and brainwashing.

Steve's burning up inside, core vibrating and making his breaths shaky, eyes refusing to focus ahead of him. There's an address on a scrap of paper in his left hand, almost steaming from being soaked through with sweat and held in a tight, fiery grip. It doesn't matter if it's readable; Steve knows the address by heart now. He's walked past the apartment building too many times to forget the way there, the miles-long walk from his door to a door he dares not enter.

Every night, he gathers the courage to leave his apartment and loses it just before entering the dark building under flickering streetlights. He's lost sleep out there, fighting with himself, leaning casually against the wall next to the door like he's on a smoke break, ready to go back into the complex. But he never manages it. Some part of him hopes that the man living in the seventh room on the third floor decides to leave, but part of him thinks that might be worse. He doesn't want to startle his once-friend. 

It takes a week for Steve to actually walk inside. He leaves the address in the pocket of the jeans he isn't wearing and leaves the house with nothing but his keys and ID on him. He even made sure none of the clothing he's wearing was from Stark--who knows what kind of stuff that man could've put in those sweaters? Steve's never liked being watched, and he thinks it's probably worse when it's an ally watching him.

Steve breathes quickly in the slowly warming late-January air, exhuming plumes of golden stardust and pale frost. He's warm, almost uncomfortably so, even though the ground is still icy with sleet and his fingers are stiff with the chill. It radiates off him, visible as the glow coming off his skin, most of it hidden by his clothing but some of it open to the air. Steve glows, and it's clearer here, in the dark and cold, than anywhere else. 

Eventually, maybe around three in the morning, Steve presses on the stiff metal knob and falls into the apartment building lobby. The metal is still stiff with frost as he pulls the door closed behind him. There are a few flickering yellow bulbs above the vacant desk, above which key chains and keys hang from several small books. 

Steve takes the stairs two at a time, following the numbers and ending up on the third floor, just as he'd figured. He glances down both sides of the hallway, checking the numbers on the nearest doors to see which way to go. Immediately to his left is room 342, and 343 is to his right. Left it is. He counts down the numbers until he's outside apartment 337, staring at the dull pewter numbers tacked on the splintering wooden door. Behind this door is someone who used to be a friend, more than a friend. His head swims with regret as he looks at the numbers. 

Was there more he could have said? If not between frenzied blows, then all those years ago when he knew they were both on the same side? Wasn't there a way he could have made it more obvious than sharing heat in thousands of beds across Europe, picking one man before all others to stand next to him, giving back the life he owed? Steve owes the man behind the door his life, several hundred times over. As much as he may have denied it in years past, he clearly saved Steve's life back there, in the numbing rapids and sharp cutting rocks. 

Steve wants to speak--he needs to speak, really, needs to reach out and communicate and thank. But his throat is empty of words and his lungs empty of wind. The only noise he can make is a faint, soft cough, the kind that precedes tears hot as the sun. He wonders if the occupant of the apartment in front of him is even awake. They were both insomniacs, in New York the first time and in the army. Steve is still an insomniac, in New York the second time. But he wonders if They managed to get inside and reprogram even that aspect of his former friend. Was that even possible? 

Sure, he's heard rumors about what They did as part of the Winter Soldier project. He hasn't had the strength to look at the detailed report files, because he can't stomach the way they called a human being an "it," a "subject," called his best friend an "undesirable insubordinate impulse." It makes him sting in his stomach and behind his eyes to even remember the words he'd glanced over. He feels like he's drowning in guilt for not talking to someone about the information his friend had overheard, not reporting that there were possibly scientists trying to replicate the miracle of Captain America drawing power from black holes. Maybe if he'd said something, none of this would have happened. Maybe if he'd reported it, his friend could have laid to rest in glaciers and water instead of Them finding him and fishing him out of the sea. 

Years of illegal research went into the creation of what the man behind the door was. Years of tests and tests and tears went into the product that attacked Steve, tried to kill him, came so close to swallowing him whole. Buried deep in the project reports was the real name of Project Winter Soldier, the name nobody used outside of hushed conversations over the subject and dry speeches to black hole-powered centrifuges. They called him Project Star-Eater. 

That was what he was meant to do, after all, wasn't it? It goes back to physics--every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Steve is made of stars stitched together in the shape of human flesh, Steve is humanity embedded in stardust and flaming gas. Of course there has to be some force, some creation made only to cancel him out. There has to be a body whose electrical impulses were replaced by black holes, whose eyes were the dark sparks spit out at the other end of the universe thousands of millennia later. 

But god damn it, did it have to be Bucky? 

Steve's golden glowing hands feel oversized and out of place in the dreary dark hallway. If he looks close enough, he can see the edges of the glow on his skin warp down and forward, like it's getting pulled through the crack under the door, eaten by a ravenous celestial body on the other side. He hopes it's just his imagination. His damned imagination, that conjured up a million and one ways he could die by his old friend's hands. That invented and destroyed thousands of scenarios where they could have been happy together, holding perfectly human hands under a perfectly normal fading sky, side-by-side on a swingset over day-warmed sand sitting before the ocean. That connected the stars over his head into the shapes of dead and dying lovers made of fire and ash. 

Ashes to ashes, Steve thinks, and not for the first time. Things like him weren't meant to exist. And things like the man behind the door--those were never meant to be imagined. The stars are the realm of the gods. Who would play god and channel them into flesh and bone? 

There is nothing behind the door, as far as Steve's aware, but that means that everything is behind the door at the same time. His hands curl and uncurl, making and breaking fists at his sides to the timing of his breaths. Inhale, exhale. Roll, relax. His palms are sweaty again, skin slick against itself when he squeezes his hands at his sides. Talking to tabloid reporters and heads of state, presidents and prime ministers, monarchs and ambassadors--it all pales in comparison to the monumental task before Steve. 

He never had a problem talking to Bucky before. Why is it different now? Have the years changed them both beyond recognition? Steve recalls how much older the Soldier had seemed, not in the lines on his face or the sag of his skin, but in the resignation in his breath. Did the Soldier see the same qualities in Steve? Or was Steve too foreign to a consciousness They fabricated over the remains and ruins of his best friend? 

How much of the Soldier is fiction and murder made from scratch and how much of it is some remnants of the man called Bucky Barnes? Are they only united by a body or do they have the same memories? Is Bucky in there? 

Steve would call out the name, but he remembers the way it made starless eyes go wide and blank during those last few encounters. He remembers the tense skin under his hands that threatened to tear itself apart under the weight of an old name. 

Instead, Steve says nothing. He looks ahead of himself, just at the numbers on the door, and approaches the old, mouldering wood. Just knocking, just asking if the person on the other side is okay. Nothing too complicated. So why is his mouth going dry? Why are his words leaving his throat? 

Steve lifts his hand and knocks quietly, knuckles barely brushing the door. He tries again, managing a solid few raps on the wood before stopping. He would knock all night if that's what it would take to draw out the resident. 

He hears nothing--what a surprise--and feels no shift under his feet. Steve crouches down and looks under the crack in the door. There isn't anything on the other side, simply darkness and nothing more. He stands again and stares the door down, seeing if it will back down first. The door doesn't budge, blissfully unaware of the blistering stars staring at it and melting the metal numbers. 

Steve reaches out to knock, but stops himself at the handle on the door. The metal warms quickly under his touch, soft and pliant. "I-I want to talk to you," he says to the seam between the wall and the door. He only means to rattle the knob, make some noise to alert the occupant, really. Even Captain America can't break locks just by turning handles. But the handle moves under his hand, turning down and drawing inward. When Steve relaxes the handle, the door is slightly open, an unseen presence in the dark beckoning for Steve to enter. 

He obliges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah okay it's kind of just like "some nights" but let me tell you, in "some nights" the door was locked the entire time. bucky just can't lock his doors, even if he wants to. long story.


	3. hold me and tell me we'll burn like stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He lets Steve in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for...: dissociation, scars, violent ideation, more direct talk about human experimentation, slightly infected wounds, and general not-quite-human feels.

“The hell are you doing here, Captain?” asks a voice in the darkness, and Steve glances around but he can't find it. He pulls the door closed behind him and it clicks, locking him in with the darkness and a man he'd rather not see. “Thought I was a closed case.” It lacks something Steve can't place—a sort of liveliness, venom. 

It was dark in the hall but darker in here, and it takes a few moments for Steve's eyes to adjust. There's no light in the room—if there's a window somewhere, it's covered well enough that the streetlights don't leak inside. It's a cold and heavy darkness, a burden on Steve's shoulders. He can see the glow coming off his hands and hides them in the pockets of his jeans. There's hardly any furniture, a minifridge and microwave stacked in the furthest corner, stacks of what look like spiral-bound notebooks, and an uneven lump against the wall that looks like it could be a mattress on the floor. 

Steve approaches the mattress like a curious dog investigating something that smells dangerous. Before he gets too close, he shifts into a crouch, edging closer and closer to the bedside. 

“What, aren't you going to say something?” The voice is hoarse and dry, bitter as coffee grounds. “'Bucky, it's just me.'” He can still mimic Steve's voice almost exactly, and it's hard to tell whether he's mocking Steve or just teasing. “'Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. Christ, what did they do to you?'” A sharp, harsh laugh. “'Bucky, you're my friend--'” 

“I didn't know if you still wanted to be called that,” he says, finally. 

There is silence from the bed. And then, “Isn't much else to call me, is there?” 

Steve closes the distance and sits, cross-legged, by the side of the mattress. There's a heavy comforter over it, covering its occupant—Bucky. A shiver runs through the body under the comforter and he shifts, rolling over to face Steve. Eyes like the night sky over the light polluted city bore holes in Steve's chest. 

“What do you want from me?” 

“Nothing.” But Steve's uncertain, doesn't know why he's here. It's hard to look at those eyes. It's hard to look anywhere, from the blackened scar above his eyebrow to the parallel lines from his temple to his cheek. They look like they could be glowing, but then again, they could just be reflecting Steve's glow. 

“Can't you be honest with me? Your old friend?” Bucky's voice is flat, and he's not even bothering to mimic inflection and emotion in it. He's too tired. Steve can see it in the bruises under his eyes and the pale lines on his forehead. 

“Have you been sleeping?” Steve asks instead, concerned. 

“Does it look like I've been doing anything else?” He rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling. From this angle, Steve can see that the shiny dark scar tissue is glowing, albeit not as brightly as those eyes. It's a soft, dark-hued glow that doesn't illuminate as much as it indicates. “Why are you here?” 

“I...,” Steve begins, but he can't find the words to end it. There's no point in being dishonest. “I was worried about you,” he confesses. 

Bucky snorts. “You're always worried about me.” 

“How long have you been in here?” It's only been a month and a half since—since everything, since Steve woke up alive and mostly dry, since the leak went through and the helicarriers went down. Nobody had seen the Soldier between then and now. 

“A while.” He looks at Steve out of the corners of his eyes. “How long have you been here?” 

“Just—just a couple hours.” It's hard to speak around the painful shard of jagged glass in his chest. He feels like he's coughing up blood whenever he opens his mouth. “Are you okay?” 

“What's that supposed to mean.” Bucky isn't asking. He's just stating the question. His eyes close, but Steve still feels the shadows of a lingering gaze. 

Steve swallows the hundreds of questions bubbling behind his tongue. He never thought it would be so hard to voice a clarification. "It means, are you feeling okay? Are you eating? Drinking water? Are you sick?" 

Bucky swats at the air and looks at Steve through lowered lids. "Stop," he says, with half of a crooked smile. "Worrying, I mean. That's my job." He extracts his arm from under the comforter and offers it to Steve, letting it hang over the side of the mattress. It's startlingly cold, and not just in the way that everything seems cold when you run at 125F on a normal day. He gasps when Steve takes his hand. 

"You're—are you sure you're not sick?" Steve wishes he'd thought to bring a thermometer. But he doesn't even have one at home, doesn't bother keeping one around. It's kind of useless. His internal temperature fluctuates a bit, but it's no big deal. Besides, he's not sure if regular medical thermometers are even calibrated to read temperatures of more than 110F in humans. Not like he's really human, anymore. 

"That's how it is now," Bucky says with half a shrug. "Always like that. Always cold. Guess I get what you mean when you say you're always too warm." The half-smile returns for a moment. "Sorry for giving you shit about it." 

"It's okay." Steve strokes the back of Bucky's hand with his thumb, feeling over familiar delicate bones and muscles. He glances up the rest of Bucky's arm, bare and prone, checking for wounds or bruises. There are none, just scars. And uneven patches of skin the same color as his eyes, like tiny lakes of darkness grafted in his skin. 

"Those are where they tried to replace it with lab-grown cells. Hyper-regenerative something. Made out of skin samples and supernovas, like everything else." 

Steve hadn't realized it, but his hand had moved up Bucky's arm, investigating the patches. They're slick and almost silky, a little rubbery, and even colder than the rest of his skin. There's something wrong feeling about them, but Steve can't place it. He presses on one of them gently, until Bucky hisses and closes his eyes in pain. "Sorry."

"They hurt sometimes. Doesn't even need touching," he says through grit teeth. He sucks a deep breath through his teeth. "There's more." 

Steve doesn't want to see whatever else They did to Bucky, but it doesn't matter since he's already moving. He rolls so he's laying on his stomach, then pushes down the comforter. His skin goes tight and goosebumps cover the exposed parts. There are more patches of ink and gold dust on his back, larger ones, with hints of redness at the edges where regular skin meets the grafts. They almost sparkle in the dark. All of his skin gives off that soft, dark glow, but these spots glow brighter. 

"Can I...?" 

"Go ahead." 

Steve places his wide palm on a stretch of untouched skin, getting a small shock from the cold. Bucky shivers under him. He carefully inspects the slick skin with air-light touches. It's cold, but the edges where it turns to normal skin are a little warm, a little swollen, like they're infected. He traces around the grafts, feeling the bumps of stitches just under the skin. The uneven rings of redness around every patch feel infected. 

"They fucked up," says Bucky, "they fucked up bad and the seams got infected. S'not going to hurt me, but it stings and itches." Steve feels rougher parts where Bucky must have scratched or picked at the reddened skin. His hand comes to rest at the small of Bucky's back, half on normal skin and half on changed skin. 

"I'm so sorry," says Steve. 

"It's their fault, not yours." Bucky loosens, breathing out, making himself limp and small. "You couldn't do anything." 

Steve shakes his head. "I should've tried to look for you. I should've told someone about that stuff you overheard." 

"I don't blame you," Bucky says softly. "You didn't know. I didn't know. We can't change that." 

"I wish I could." 

"Hmph." Bucky turns his head so he's looking at Steve with those empty hollow eyes. "You don't owe me anything, Steve." 

"You've saved my ass more times than I can count," he argues. 

"Be quiet." Bucky's eyes flutter. "The least you can do is help me forget." 

"How?" 

Bucky inches out from under Steve's hand, so he's pressed up against the wall. "Share your heat?" 

"Gladly." Steve slips off his shoes, his jacket, his jeans, until he's down to boxers and a shirt. It looks warm under that comforter, and he doesn't want to overheat. He sits on the edge of the mattress first, then lifts up the blanket and covers his legs. Bucky relaxes back into him as he lays down. "Better?" 

"Much." 

Bucky is the large expanse of coldness against his chest and stomach and hips and legs, and it's refreshing to feel cooled for once. Steve tucks one arm under his head and drapes the other over Bucky's shoulders. Bucky curls against Steve, not holding him but trying to be held. 

For the first time in months, Steve sleeps without nightmares. 

* 

Simple tasks give him more trouble than they used to. Bucky's never been normal, never been anything close to it, but “waking up” from the brainwashing, from the control, makes everything a lot more difficult. It's like he was cognitively reshuffled. Not that They cared much for his cognitive processes—it didn't matter how they worked so long as there was a kill-switch for them, a signal that would turn them off and override them with someone else entirely. 

There is no cognition as the Soldier. He can feel the split, prod at it like a tongue at a loose, bleeding tooth, but there's nothing on the other side of the divide. Even though he's not there during those times, he can remember it afterward, and there's no one there with him. There's no co-pilot, no malign sentience behind the killing hands. He's off, no thoughts, no feelings, just a response to code words and a plan of action. 

Bucky hates it. He hates the way it feels to prod at the gross empty thing in his head, how it feels like a jar cracked open and spilling out sickness even though there's nothing inside. He hates the way the emptiness takes over his thoughts sometimes, until suddenly he's looking through the crack under the door with a knife in his hand. How he drifts off and imagines opening the door to Steve, already battered and bruised, seeking shelter, how he imagines twisting his neck and shattering his spine. Sleeping is the only way he can avoid it; at least then he's in control of when his dreams take over from reality. 

Didn't make it any easier when he dreamed he woke up next to Steve's slowly-cooling, lifeless body, and endless blood on the sheets. 

He washes his hands, wipes off his pale and cold-sweaty face, stares at the mirror with the crack in the top corner. How many times has he longed to finish the job? Bucky barely recognizes himself in his own face anymore, just in glances out of the corner of his eye, when he's turning and neither his eyes nor his scars are visible. In those moments, he can pretend he's still human. He puts a hand to his stinging neck and grimaces, bowing forward over the sink. Of course, it's always interrupted by the inflamed stitches where his skin met foreign objects, where his hyperactive immune system became confused by this skin that's the same as his own, yet so different. There are a few places where normal skin has grown over the grafts, but healing stopped long ago. Bucky's not holding out any hope. 

Heat helps the stinging, so he douses a washcloth with hot water and puts it on his neck, head tilted to keep it on. Hot water drips down his front and back, making lines of dampness on his underwear. The lights in the bathroom flare, suddenly too bright, and Bucky flicks the switch by the door. A patch on his leg flares, then, and he sinks to the floor. The door clicks closed behind his back. He groans and curls his knees to his chest. 

The next thing he knows, the lights are on in the bathroom and his head is in the shaded spot under the sink, pressed against tile that's only warm to him, facing mildew stains in the drywall. There's noise above him, and Bucky just wants it all to stop. There's a face bright as a star in the corner of his vision, and he knows it's important he just can't remember why and his head hurts too much to look directly at it. 

Bucky doesn't realize he was repeating mindless, numb words like “go away” and “stop it” until there's a warm hand over his lips. He stops moving, heart fluttering in his chest like a trapped butterfly. Sometimes it's better to go limp, to grin and bear it. Sometimes that makes it hurt less. 

“Bucky?” asks a voice, and it's strange because nobody's called him that in so, so, so long that it feels unreal to think about having been a person called Bucky. Who is he? He has numbers in his head, printed along the inside of his right forearm and inked on the underside of every plate of his left like a serial number. He has bright lights in his heads, and sudden darkness, and a desperate void yawning in his chest. He has terror, too, but he's long since learned to ignore it. 

Hands like the sun hold him up, wrap around his body, press soothingly against the aching infection in his skin. They raise him, carrying him effortlessly, metal and dying star mass and all, and bring him into the dark. They deliver him to somewhere warm and soft, and Bucky falls unconscious again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i was going to post this tomorrow but FFUCK THAT i am impulsive and terrible sometimes
> 
> ch 4 will be up in a minute and you will get to meet the biggest little shit in the fic, it'll be great, i think you all already know who it is 
> 
> as always dedicated to my boyfriend styvie + my darling dear friend rae for inspiring this fic and even encouraging it. 
> 
> updates and sneak peaks and writing process stuff will go on my fanfic blog--that's d0ct0rd0ct0r on tumblr. 
> 
> (oh also steve briefly refers to the events of "star-spangled man" in this chapter and you should probably read it since it's the prologue to this mess)


	4. keep making trouble til you find what you love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone shows up and fucks everything up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for dissociation (at the beginning), tony stark

Steve returns the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. He hardly sees his own apartment anymore, and as much as he wants to bring Bucky back there with him, the question is always met with a staunch "no." But there's a queen-sized bed there instead of an old double mattress on the floor, real food and real appliances, warm air and quiet hallways and thick walls. 

But the risk is too great for Bucky, who still sees SHIELD as HYDRA, who looked through the curtain and saw nothing where They'd put god in him. Most nights, he wakes up crying, or screaming, or shivering. Some nights, he wakes up and sneaks out of bed, perches on the counter in front of the mirror, watches Steve sleep from a safe distance. That far away, he can't hurt Steve. 

Steve, who brings him fresh food and makes him shower regularly. Who sits him down and very carefully shaves his face, who deftly avoids the tender grafts on his neck and chin. Who sees stars in eyes where others only see void. Steve is a living, breathing miracle, and sometimes he's too light for Bucky to touch. But as much as he thinks about bruising Steve, it's him who wakes up with the same bruises every day, the same uneven patches of skin that are shadowed like bruises and ringed with infection. 

In their first week of not quite living together again, Bucky only has three severe dissociative episodes, the kind where he finds himself on the floor, or fighting shadows, or scratching and scratching at the itching stitches just out of reach. He only forgets Steve's name a couple of times, only once forgets who he is altogether. It's easier for Bucky to lose himself, and there are times when Steve can tell he didn't wake up as himself. There are times when Steve wakes with the lingering impression of cold hands on his throat and the uncertainty of whether it was just a dream or an unconscious reflex by the sleeping figure beside him. 

But Steve stays, because that's the horrible blessing of having Steve Rogers as a sometimes-lover, always-friend. He'll lay next to you when you can hardly breathe, let alone talk, and he'll wash off the blood from the places where you scratched through layers of skin. He'll hold you even as you curse him over and over, threaten to kill him in a million and one ways. Steve is a bright point in an otherwise endless expanse of darkness, and Bucky can't help but gravitate toward him, start to orbit him as a mass disguised as the rest of space. 

"I still think you're the most handsome man I've met," says Steve, and damn him because he means it. His raw honesty makes Bucky want to cry, want to punch the goodness out of him, want to break lying teeth and a traitorous jaw, want to bruise his evenly-glowing golden skin and destroy the stars powering it. 

Because, in the end, Bucky is still Project Star-Eater. Bucky is still a weapon carefully constructed to build on what Steve is, to be better than him, to effortlessly take him down. Sometimes, in the dark spaces between periods of sleep where he's left with his thoughts and the steady rise and fall of Steve's chest, Bucky wonders if they're only an even match because he can't bring himself to end it. He can't snuff out the brightest thing in the world because it's the brightest thing in his own world. 

Steve's been living in and out of the run-down apartment for a week and a half when they first have company. As out of place as Steve looked, with his clean, colorful clothing and literally glowing smile, he blends into the background in comparison to the man who walks in there like he owns the place, probably because he does. Steve's presence may fill rooms, but the man strutting up the stairs brings a party wherever he goes, like an umbrella keeping off the perpetual storm over his head. Even dressed in a long-sleeved v-neck, a heavy but just-out-of-stylish winter coat, and precisely torn-up jeans, his smile's worth more than most occupants of the apartment will see in a decade. 

Tony Stark saunters up to the door numbered 337 and knocks twice. 

Bucky wakes from a light nap and raises his head to listen, eyes closed and head cocked. There's a third knock at the door, sharp and impatient. His blood pressure rises to a rush in his head. Hardly able to breathe, he shakes the softly glowing man beside him awake, and in his anxiety it's a bit more rough than he intended. Steve wakes in time to the fourth and fifth knocks on the door, delivered in rapid succession. "There's someone at the door," Bucky whispers into Steve's better ear. "They've knocked five times." He's practically breathing through grit teeth. 

Steve sits up, puts his hand on the other's shoulder. He moves it up to stroke the uneven surface of Bucky's cheek. His hands are warm on the always-irritated sore spot where They'd stuck a graft on his face. Or had of grown there by itself? Some of the patches spread after they were grafted, making irregular rashes of darkness on his skin. "Relax," says Steve. "I'm sure it's some sort of mistake."

There's a sixth knock at the door. Bucky's spine is taut as a heavy wire cord about to snap. "They seem pretty certain," he says, but Steve just kisses his forehead and stands. He stretches, puts on pants, and throws a jacket over his bare chest, hood over his face. 

He answers the door to find none other than--the closest word here is coworker, but there's something more personal about their relationship, but it isn't personal enough to count as the camaraderie of brothers-in-arms. So, to Steve, the man at the door is just Stark, Mr. Stark if he's trying to be polite. Tony stands a good half foot, maybe more, shorter than Steve, but his personality is ten feet tall and precedes him. It's currently trying to push its way into the apartment, but Steve is a brick wall in the middle of the doorway. 

"What the hell are you doing here?" Steve asks in a frustrated whisper. 

"A guy can't check up on his super-friends?" Tony asks. "I'm hurt, Cap." 

Steve gives him a death glare and Stark fights it off with his sarcastic defiance. "How did you know I was here?" 

"You're not exactly inconspicuous, you know. I just asked around until I found someone who saw a guy built like a glow-in-the-dark brick shithouse, and--" 

"Leave." 

Tony folds his arms and digs his heels in for a fight. "No." 

For the first time, Steve notices the lack of a faint glow on Stark's skin, the missing light under his shirt. He frowns. "Finally got sick of being one of us?" 

"Nah, I just moved on from that part of my life. If you couldn't tell, us muggles still age at a measurable pace." He shrugs. "It's cute that you're trying to protect your boyfriend, but stop changing the subject already. Just be glad I made it here before SHIELD." 

"Boyfriend?" Steve sputters. 

"You think my dad didn't tell me about you two? I think he had the hots for you." 

"So did everyone." 

Stark ignores him. "But he never stopped going on about you and--" He doesn't know what to call the man hiding in the vast dark somewhere behind Steve. "--you and Barnes. Never left each others' sides. Maybe it was different then, but it makes you think, nowadays." 

"He's not--" 

"You do know that it's okay to be queer in public now, right?" Steve winces at the slur. How many times had he heard it hurled at him like stones and hail on the endless walk between school and home, or whatever constituted as home then? "Like, everyone knows about me and Pep and Rhodey. It's no big deal." 

"Everyone knows practically everything about you," Steve remarks. "Besides, Bucky and--I don't want to push him into anything he might not--I don't want to pick up where we left off if he doesn't remember it, or doesn't want it." 

"Aha!" Tony clasps his hands in front of him. "So you were sweethearts!" 

"Yes, we had lockets with pictures of each other and everything." Steve rolls his eyes. "Why are you here?" 

"Is it bad for a guy to want to visit his co-worker and his significant other, not otherwise specified?" Tony tries to push past Steve, but he doesn't budge. 

"He doesn't want company," he says, dry and half-threatening, "and I fully intend to respect his wishes." 

"Well, it's not going to help him to stay in here alone with just his life-sized Captain America teddy bear." 

"He makes the decisions about his environment." 

"Not interested in moving into your room in the Tower? When I first heard that you were sneaking around to see him, I upgraded the bed on your floor to a king-sized one." 

"And I thought you didn't take after your father." Steve shakes his head. "He won't even move into my apartment." 

Tony wrinkles his nose. "That closet space of an apartment you call your home address?" 

"Not all of us are used to living in squalor, Stark." 

"Jesus, you don't have to be so rude about it." 

"I'm not the one snooping around and following someone you claim to respect." 

Tony sighs. He pinches the bridge of his nose, puts a hand on his hip, looks to the side, and sighs again. He takes off his big round sunglasses and folds them, putting them in the breast pocket of his jacket. "If I can find you, so can Fury." 

Steve freezes like a cat under the hungry gaze of the canary. "Do you think he's--?" 

"Not yet," says Tony, "but he'll figure it out soon. I can throw him off your scent, but it isn't going to last long." 

"Shit," says Steve. "Shit," he says again, for emphasis, knocking his forehead against the side of the doorframe. There's a rustle, a movement in the darkness. He can't hear it, but Tony can. 

Stark shrugs. "He's a liability. People aren't going to forget that SHIELD was HYDRA until the Winter Soldier's off the streets and--" 

"Did I give you permission to call me that?" asks a voice, ice-sharp, from the darkness beyond the door. Bucky appears all at once, like he's materializing under Steve's glow. He makes for an intimidating picture, half-unshaven, with his scars out in the open and no mask to cover the patches of the void on his cheeks, chin, and neck. It's hard to tell if the uneven darknesses under his eyes are more unnatural rubbery silk skin or regular sleepless shadows. 

"Bucky!" Steve turns around. "You should be laying down--" 

"Barnes!" Tony says, almost simultaneously. "Just the man I wanted to see!" 

Bucky tilts his head a little, watching Tony with unreadable empty eyes. "Do they know about this location?" 

"I don't know yet. But they'll find it quickly enough when they figure out that you and Steve have been canoodling--" 

Somehow, he manages to pull off a very threatening clearing of his throat. "How long do we have?" 

"A week, tops?" Tony hypothesizes. "I can probably buy you another one on top of that, but that's all." 

Steve recovers, wrapping an arm around Bucky's waist. "It's going to be okay. We'll figure out what to do." He looks at Tony out of the corner of his eyes. "Won't we?" 

"I know where they're not gonna look," Tony says, "but you're not going to like it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
> 
> like i'd like to say this one was intense to write but honestly i get in The Zone and kind of don't remember writing. like i remember writing, but not what i wrote. anyway this is the chapter to remind you that there's a plot. 
> 
> just wait everything's about to get terrible and i'm sorry. 
> 
> just like last time, dedicated to my fav person ven & my wonderful friend rae. no seriously this fic wouldn't exist without them. if rae hadn't been like, "omg look at void!danny" to me, i never would have been like "omg imagine void!bucky" to ven. love these nerds. 
> 
> oh also this is probably the last double update heh. i'm way ahead of the curve in terms of writing but the chapters get longer and more intense from here on out. i'm going to do them weekly, so expect chapter 5 on the 5th, 6 on the 12th, etc. (the whole thing so far is about 23,500 words long, including "star-spangled man)


	5. room in a hotel in new york city

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things... don't go as planned. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: violence! violence violence violence including gun violence and hand-to-hand combat!, implicit brainwashing, death! murder! fun!, more tony

"No! No, no, no, no, no." Bucky hasn't stopped repeating the word since Stark left. He's up and pacing, pacing, pacing around the room. It's the most active Steve's seen him since everything... collapsed. On one hand, it's good that he has the energy to move more than just between the bed and the kitchen corner. On the other, it's worrying that he's so agitated. Steve knows how Bucky gets when he's agitated, and the idea that all the shit that happened over seventy years may have worsened his reaction to stress makes Steve want to up and leave. But he won't. He's been through much, much worse with Bucky. He'd follow him into hell; he'd go alone if it meant coming back out with Bucky. Stark was right about the whole partnership thing. It's just so fragile, so nebulous, that Steve doesn't want to shatter it with the wrong words. 

Steve stands up from the bed, follows Bucky around the circle he's wearing in the linoleum. "I'm not happy about it either," he says, "but it's this or the cells." 

"No!" Bucky shouts, spinning around, hands rising to fight on instinct. "No! No, no, no." He points at Steve, glaring at him with death in his eyes. It's not serious, not this time, but that is only a small blessing. But he's mad and frustrated, to the point where he hardly has words anymore. 

"What else can we do?" Steve reaches out and takes Bucky's wrist. He strokes the rough callouses of flesh and space. For his part, Bucky doesn't say a word, but his shoulders slump. He walks forward and rests his head on Steve's chest, eyes closed. His hand takes Steve's. "I know, I know. I don't trust him either." He takes a deep breath. "But I trust him more than SHIELD. Director Fury's got a good heart, but he's under a lot of pressure right now, and he doesn't always think with his heart." Steve smiles, reaches down to cup Bucky's chin and lift it up. "But you know what's funny?" 

"No." 

"He thinks you're more dangerous than nuking New York." 

Hours later, Steve is wearing the most ridiculous thing he's ever seen. It's an ugly drab modernist shade of yellow-grey, stitched into a rough shawl shape and wrapped around his shoulders. Stark said it would throw them off his trail. He holds a matching length of stiff plastic fabric in his other hand for Bucky to don. 

Bucky doesn't have anything to pack, not since Steve's started "collecting" his journals full of multilingual scrawls. He can hardly read it once it's on paper, how the hell does Steve expect to understand anything in it? Steve, who speaks all of three languages--English, of course, and then four half-languages. It's a ridiculous idea. 

Steve wraps the stiff fabric around Bucky's shoulders, securing it at his collarbone. Bucky can't help but scratch at the place where it meets skin. He's in a white medical mask and dark glasses--and the rest of him looks sick enough to go unnoticed. Steve's in sunglasses, too, and a low hoodie, and a little powder foundation to cover the galaxy over his cheeks. They're not entirely unrecognizable, but they won the recognized at a glance--that's about the best they can hope for. Bucky flexes his hands in the tight leather of his gloves. The adamantium showed through the sheer latex medical gloves. 

The story is that "Dennis Carroll" is the assistant of "Benjamin Ford," who's a celebrity (hence the stretch limousine and ritzy room) hiding his identity (the fake names, the glasses) while recovering from a bad bout of whatever's going around (the mask). That should keep SHIELD off their case, at least for a little while. 

Bucky takes most of Steve's bags, loading them on his arms and back. When the limousine, dark as the night around them, pulls up to the curb, he silently refuses to let the chauffeur take the bags. "He wants to keep everything safe," Steve says in a conspiratorial whisper, winking behind his sunglasses. "We're keeping a low profile." 

"Understandable, sir." The chauffeur winks back and allows Bucky into the low-ceilinged car, Steve climbing in after him. 

Bucky is a bundle of shivering metal rods, bound in the center so tightly that they might snap in half. Steve puts a hand on his shoulder and keeps it there as the car starts and rolls onto the main streets. 

It's almost three in the morning when they arrive at the hotel, and Steve checks them in while Bucky waits in the car. Stark arranged everything so they wouldn't be noticed or bothered. The limo would pull around to a back garage and they'd take the utility elevator to one of the highest floors. 

Bucky's gone white behind the mask and glasses that cover most of his face. He looks younger and more scared than Steve's seen him since rescuing him the first time. The utility elevator moves slowly, grinding against the walls. His teeth clench, gritting in tune. He shuffles closer to Steve's side for security. 

Steve dials Stark to confirm that they've checked in alright, that they're on their way up to the hotel room. "And these... things regulate our heat signatures on cameras?" 

"Yeah," says Stark around a yawn. "Yeah, that's what they do. They block your signals and give off their own. Or was that the prototype?" 

"I don't know. We've got the... interestingly colored ones." 

"Whatever. It doesn't matter. You're safe, don't worry. Tell Barnes even though I know he can hear me." Steve relays the message. "Anyway, the jet'll be in in a couple of days. It would be here sooner, but I had to call for it behind SHIELD's backs. Kind of sucks when your living space is fifty levels over top-secret government operations." 

Steve says something, unsympathetic, and Bucky snorts. The elevator finally grinds to a halt and steadies itself. Steve leads the way into the hallway and Bucky follows, keeping track of every door, every window, every possible exit as he drags five bags alongside him. He waits as Steve hangs up and fumbles for his keycard, then fumbles trying to make it work. The light on the door finally turns green and the lock unclicks. Steve holds it open for Bucky. 

Something is... off. He says nothing as he deposits the bags in the closet off the hallway into their suite. The gloves and glasses go with them. The mask goes in the trash. Steve's pocketing his own sunglasses when he catches up to Bucky and notices how tight his angles are. 

"We're here," he says, "we're fine." 

Bucky says nothing and they walk into the main part of the hotel room, where the hall from the door funnels out into a large space with two huge beds in one corner and what looks like a full living room set in another. The walls are creamy off-white, with matching curtains leading to another room. The furniture all has matching silk dust ruffles around the edges, and sumptuous fat pillows and cushions with gold rope edgings. The coffee table is an immaculate slice of either petrified wood or a huge geode. The TV is mounted on the wall, with a glass and granite table underneath it displaying five remotes and at least three boxes Steve doesn't recognize. The carpet is a deep shade of dark wine red. It's the exact image of luxury. 

Except for about fifteen agents decked out in SHIELD gear, equipped with several shock guns (at least, that's what Steve hopes they are), all aimed at the two of them in the mouth of the hallway. They instinctively fall into fighting stances, pressed back to back, scoping out either half of the room. In the middle of the room stands Director Fury, hands behind his back, watching Steve and Bucky (and mostly Bucky) carefully. 

"Come on," Steve whines. "Can't one thing go right?" 

Fury opens his mouth to speak, but Steve's already headed for two of the agents. He dodges the electric blasts from their shock guns and lunges at them, tripping on and tackling the other. On the opposite side of the room, Bucky's sweeping feet out from beneath some of the agents, tapping the others on the backs of their necks and making them drop like flies with a short shock from his arm. That's still less than half of them. 

Steve rolls under another blast that marks the walls black and ends up behind the instigating agent. They try to smack him in the side of the head with the butt of their shock gun, but Steve ducks and uses their momentum to spin them over and flip them to the ground. Bucky's disabling shock guns one at a time, with localized blasts to the triggers that gum them and prevent them from moving. His face is hard, almost unrecognizable, and there's a spark of joy in his black eyes. 

Then, a high-ranking agent (judging by the outfit) neither Steve nor Bucky knows steps into the fray and barks something in Russian that makes Bucky freeze. He follows it with something that sounds like a poem, and Bucky goes blank, feet drawn together and hands at his sides. One more command and Bucky walks toward him like a wind-up tin soldier. 

"Bucky!" Steve says, glancing away for too long. Someone manages to land a jab in his side. He twists back to push them to the floor. By the time he's clear, Bucky is in manacles that vibrate and crackle with energy. His right hand is pulled to his left side with his immobile, limp arm. His eyes are dolls' eyes, shiny and shallow. He looks almost dead. "The hell are you doing?" 

"Detaining a threat, Captain Rogers," Fury says, unmoving. The agents around them have stopped actively fighting Steve, but each has their sights on him. 

"Bucky's not a threat." 

"No," he concedes, "but the Winter Soldier is." 

Steve looks at the empty shell that's his--his best friend, his partner in crime, his hero. "He isn't the Winter Soldier." 

"Not consciously." Fury gestures to a few of the crumpled bodies on the floor. They're immobile, bloodied, broken. Dead. "He fights to kill." 

"You attacked him." 

"But what if we waited and he went off anyway? This is for your own safety, Rogers." 

"My safety?" he asks incredulously. "Listen, he couldn't kill me if he tried--" 

"You wouldn't be alive if someone hadn't intervened--" 

"He intervened! He saved my life." 

"This isn't up for debate." The agent whose hand is around Bucky's wrist, hard and crushing, presses a button on the outside of the manacle attached to his left arm. Bucky spasms and shakes, falling to his knees, face still blank. He's looking through the ceiling like he's praying or dead. 

Steve's lips tighten and he has to physically restrain himself from cursing out Fury right then and there. Stark said something about there's being a "chance" of detection. He recommended following SHIELD's orders if that happened, because the consequences would be much worse if he didn't. Steve's blood is cold in his veins and he wants to punch the superiority off that agent's face, standing there with an arm on Bucky's shoulder like he's showing off a dog. 

Bucky's no animal, but they're caging him like one. 

"Fine," Steve relents. He glances around the room. There aren't any exits aside from the door. The agents were already there, long before they checked in. If Stark sold them out, Steve's prepared to take down the tower to get Bucky out. But if he didn't... "One condition." 

"What's that?" 

"I'm coming with him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aka chapter five: IN WHICH SHIT HITS THE FAN! EXTREME EDITION. 
> 
> the plot really starts here guys!! !!! !!!! this is exciting i am excited and also some ten chapters ahead in my writing so that's pretty cool if i do say so myself B)
> 
> if you like this pls kudo or comment!!! and i will love you forever!!  
> if you're interested in updates, follow d0ct0rd0ct0r on tumblr! that's my official fanfic blog! 
> 
> as always, dedicated to the boyf ven and my good friend rae!! it's all their fault that this fic happened in the first place, so i invite you to direct your hate to them. ;-)


	6. the ringing in my ears gets violent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Tony talk over coffee. Tony misses something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: repeated tony stark, illness, self-experimentation (in the iron man context), tony has a sad

Turns out they don't have accommodations suited for Captain America on the detainment floor, but on the other hand, his personal floor is fully-furnished and stocked with anything he could possibly need. JARVIS even sets up a live feed from Bucky's cell. 

Steve can't sleep. 

He figures that he might as well have an excuse to not sleep, so Steve takes the elevator to the level with the communal kitchen, dining room, and TV/game room. He doesn't need a whole floor to himself. It's too much space, too empty, too many places where ghosts and shades can echo in his eyes. Maybe there's someone in the kitchen. Bruce's been here since Tony fixed the place, and Clint moved in a couple of months ago, which means that Tasha drops in sometimes. For such an intensely alienating person, Tony does enjoy surrounding himself with people. 

The lights are on already and Steve lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He walks through the big, empty room with its big, blank screens and into the kitchen, where light pours from the bottom of the doors. Just before he opens them, he catches voices on the other side. He can't quite recognize them. They're muffled, but one of them--the one that's doing most of the talking--is almost yelling. Steve thinks it might be Tony. He slips into the room, unnoticed by its occupants. 

Stark sits on one of the counters, barefoot, in black sweatpants and a black sleeveless shirt that shows the edges of the irregular tan patches on his chest. His hands are clutched around a half-empty coffee cup and his legs are swinging violently. Across from him, sitting at a chair with it's back to the table, is Director Fury, in casual wear--the first time Steve's ever seen him in civvies. It's just a sweatshirt, jeans, and white slippers (bunny slippers), but it's so far removed from the image Steve has of Fury. 

Neither of them notice him. 

"--honeymoon I planned, but you trashed the hotel room, too! Do you know who has to pay for that damage? Do you even know? It's me. Me." Tony gestures to himself. "And that's not a problem, usually, but I've had to cover your ass, like, twice a week since you've moved in here. Fuck's sake, I hadn't even tested the detainment levels and now you're using them." 

"I think our occupant isn't going to be putting much stress on them," Fury muses. 

"That's beside the point! I mean--okay, I got the bill, right, and someone burned a hole in one of the bed skirts. One of the Dupioni silk bed skirts. Talk about a pain in the ass to replace!" 

"At least nobody broke the solid crystal bathroom set." 

"At least." Tony rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his coffee. "They--aka we--have to recarpet the entire room because it was burned in several spots! And there was blood on it! The blood wouldn't have been a problem if there weren't also burn holes!" The carpet was a thick, luxurious dark wine color; Steve hadn't noticed that there was blood until Fury pointed it out. He watches Tony in awe. "You can't just do that! You can't just--go around my back and look at what I've been buying lately!" 

"It was a matter of national security, Mr. Stark--" 

"Like hell it was! One of my friends and his partner going on an island honeymoon is not national security." 

"You forgot the part where that 'partner' is a wanted war criminal with over a hundred counts of murder on his head." Fury turns around to pick up the large white mug on the table and spots Steve. He takes a sip of his drink and stands up, stretching. "It's almost two in the morning. We can continue this tomorrow." Fury starts toward the door. 

"Like hell we can!" Tony calls after him. 

"Captain Rogers," he says with a nod as he passes Steve. 

"Director Fury." Steve nods back. 

Fury leaves the room and shuffles toward the elevator. 

The kitchen is still, and Tony stares at the door, gaping, holding out his coffee cup like he's pointing it at an invisible criminal. Finally, he notices Steve, and slides off the counter with a sigh. 

"Can't sleep either?" Steve asks, approaching the cabinets. He looks through them--how many dinner sets does one guy need?--and finally pulls out a large mug, the kind you use for café au lait. 

"I don't sleep." He holds out a hand. "Let me get that for you. I don't want you breaking my coffee machine." 

Steve hands him the mug. "Asshole." He takes the seat Fury vacated. "What was that all about?" 

"You couldn't tell?" Tony asks from the contraption set up at the juncture of two counters in the corner. He fiddles with knobs and switches. 

"Couldn't really hear what you were saying." Steve points to his better ear. 

"Right, sorry." 

"If you could turn around while you're talking to me, that would be great." 

Tony obliges, leaning back against the counters and folding his arms across his chest. He's been doing that more lately, ever since he took out the arc reactor. "I was politely reminding him about how he fucked up my friends' romantic getaway honeymoon by burning holes in the hotel carpet." 

Steve rolls his eyes. "Were your 'friends' even married?" 

"No." Tony grins. "Might as well be, though. They're an older couple. Known each other for years." 

"I can only imagine." 

The machine dings and Tony turns back around, pulling out two cups of steaming liquid. "How do you take your coffee?" he asks over his shoulder. 

"Three sugar, three creamer, and vanilla syrup if you have any." 

"Aren't you the kind of guy who's supposed to take his coffee black?" 

Steve grins. "Didn't they tell you that the serum doesn't reinforce your tastebuds? I can't stand that shit."

"It'll be our little secret." Tony puts both cups on the table, the lighter one near Steve. He takes a seat. Steve turns his chair around to face him. 

"So it wasn't you?" 

"Who sold you out? Nah." Tony shakes his head. "You doubt me. Fury got into my personal financial records--" 

"How? I thought JARVIS would prevent that somehow." 

Tony's face flushes red. "He got on my laptop when I got up to use the bathroom." 

Steve smacks his hand against his forehead, grimacing. "Stark," he groans. 

"Has anyone ever told you that you'd make a wonderful Captain Picard?" Tony takes a sip of his coffee. "Because you would. You've got that 'world-weary but still foolishly trusting' look to you. And you do the thing with your face." He mimics Steve's expression. 

"Star Trek, Next Generation," he recounts dryly, "I actually watched that one." 

"I grew up with it." Tony shrugs. "I can't help but he a little partial." 

"And I figured you liked it because you were on it." 

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

"Isn't it obvious? You played Wesley Crusher." 

"You come into my house, insult my personage," Tony says. "I am offended. You've lost your right to live under my roof." 

He smiles. "But we have a deal. That means you'll have to let Bucky out." Steve takes a sip of his coffee and almost spits it out. It's acrid, even under the clothing sweetness of the creamer and vanilla. He coughs. "What the hell did you put in this stuff?" 

"Coffee, sugar, creamer, syrup?" Stark recounts. 

"This is worse than the stuff at basic. Who taught you how to make coffee?" 

"I did." 

Steve stands up and dumps his cup in the sink. He approaches the coffee machine and assesses it. A flip of a switch later and he pulls out the soggy filter and grounds. It smells awful. "When was the last time you put new coffee in this thing?" he asks, pinching his nose on his way to dump it in the garbage. 

"Dunno. This morning?" 

Steve looks at the ceiling for release. "How does anyone live with you?" 

“Rhodey usually makes the coffee.” Tony takes a sip of his and Steve notices that it's starless-night black. He cringes at the thought of what it might taste like. “He can do those little cream and foam drawings! I have no idea where he learned that.” Beat. “I have no idea where he learned a lot of things.” Steve can practically hear the “wink wink, nudge nudge” in his voice, even with his back turned to Stark. 

The coffee contraption isn't half as convoluted as it looks, and Steve has a cup of real, decently-made coffee in less than a minute. There are little packets of sugar and cups of creamer, just like at a restaurant, neatly organized in the wire basket next to the machine. It's bizarre. Steve uses four of the sugar packets (because they're smaller than the spoonfuls he uses) and three of the creamer cups, sliding them into the black hole in the middle of the counter space. He grabs a tiny little spoon, just the right size for stirring coffee, and brings it with him to the table. 

“You want this place to feel like an actual home, right?” Steve asks, stirring his coffee in long, slow circles. 

“That's kind of the idea, thanks for noticing.” Tony stands up to make another cup of coffee. “Anyway, you don't have to change the filter every time. It still brews a whole pot of coffee.” 

“The point isn't your fancy coffee machine,” Steve says, “it's that you've got condiments like we're in a restaurant.” 

The coffee machine purrs as it pours Tony's coffee. He turns around, leaning back against the counter, arms folded low on his chest. “Are you saying that I'm too fancy?” 

“No, it's too... formal.” 

Tony picks up one of the cups of creamer and eyes it. “I thought they were elegant,” he says, peeling back the top and taking it like a shot. 

“Remind me to never ask for your opinion on anything ever again.” Steve takes a sip of his coffee. Way better than whatever the hell Stark made him before. For his part, Stark grabs his cup and takes a long drink before even letting it cool. Steve stares. He looks between Tony's chest and mug, back and forth, feeling like there was some sort of connection but being too tired to figure it out. “Oh,” he says. “You miss it.” 

“Can't a guy like to scald his tongue without getting a psychoanalysis?” Tony sits at the table again, coffee cup in front of him. He stares into it, and in the light, Steve can see the dark circles under his eyes. 

“Aren't you cold?” Steve asks. “Going around in just an undershirt?” 

“Nah. It was never like that for me. JARVIS, what's Steve's body temperature?” 

“56.67 degrees centigrade, at rest,” the AI answers automatically, “or 125 degrees Fahrenheit.” 

“Pull up a chart.” A chart appears on the table and Steve pulls back from it, not willing to break the built-in screen. “Okay. Show me Cap's infrared view--” An outline of his body comes up, bright red, orange, and yellow. “--mine--” An outline of Stark, filled with blues, greens, and yellows. “--and mine circa six months ago.” An identical outline, almost entirely green and yellow, but with an orange circle around his chest like a target with a smaller circle of red in its center. “I only ran a little feverish.” 

Steve blinks at the charts, examining them. The red circle is exactly the size of the arc reactor. The orange covers all the places where Stark has permanent patches of half-burnt skin. “Must've been cold at first,” he observes before taking a sip of his coffee to get out of having to say anything more. 

“I was in bed for, like, two weeks, while it cleared my system. You can ask Pep.” Tony looks at the diagrams again before a flash of disgust overcomes his face and he swipes them away. The screen on the table goes dark, making it look like a regular table again. “Two weeks after the surgery recovery.” 

They sit in silence for a few minutes more, each staring into their own cups of coffee. Steve doesn't know what to say. Is he supposed to sympathize? Say Tony's brave? Ask how it feels to live without sparks in your veins, the constant rush of heat in every part of your body? The heat's still uncomfortable, but New York is as cold as he remembered. At least he doesn't need a coat going out. 

“Well, that was fun,” Tony says, standing abruptly. He leaves his coffee, still steaming and half drunk, on the counter. “We should really compare notes again. Sleep well, Cap.” And with that, Stark turns around and walks out the doors. 

Steve sits in silence for a while; it feels like half an hour, but it could be longer. He turns down JARVIS' query—in the form of words written across the table screen—to get the live view of the cells in here. When he returns to his room, it's almost five in the morning. 

Against his better judgement, he checks the feed projected on his wall. It's dark in the detainment cell, but a glow emanates from the occupant in the corner, and Steve would recognize that sitting silhouette anywhere. Bucky's legs are crossed in front of him, and he's slumped toward the wall. His elbows sit on his knees and his chin touches his sternum. To the untrained eye, it would look like he's meditating. But Steve knows that posture, that air. Bucky's shutting down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> badda bing here ya go
> 
> weekly reminder to follow d0ct0rd0ct0r on tumblr for more updates and, idk, maybe previews? i talk a lot about writing on there and i'm on like chapter 23 now so 
> 
> kudos and comments are greatly appreciated~ 
> 
> another thanks to the boyf (ven) and my darling dear friend rae for the inspiration~ both initial and continuing~ 
> 
> also this was supposed to be a breather chapter but i don't think i quite managed that with all the tony stuff. OH WELL. it's certainly a breather compared to... NEXT CHAPTER. and the one after that, and the one after that... i don't think you catch another break until like, chapter 16 or 17. and then you don't catch a break until the end. oh no.


	7. the places where you've been lost and found out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: dissociation holy shit, paranoia, death, mentions of medical abuse and experimentation, mild cuddling, passive starving/dehydration

The walls are closing in on him with the ringing sound of the cryo chamber. Bucky can feel the leers on his back like laser sights. His heart pounds in his throat and coldness crawls under his eyelids, between the plates of metal from his shoulder to his fingers. It hardens, freezing, locking him into place. He can feel the darkness pulse around him. 

Bucky sways between conscious and unconscious, time passing like an undercranked film camera. Even when he's awake, he isn't in his body; he's sitting three inches to the left of it, and it moves with him like the world's most awkward marionette. He's a ghost possessing his own corpse, partially inside of it and in control of it, but not really belonging there. When he isn't in his body, he doesn't feel the cold as badly. 

The disorientation gives way to awareness and confusion as the hours crawl past. He wakes up in stages, feeling sleep paralysis free his joints one at a time. Time is meaningless; he remembers going with Steve to the hotel, having a bad feeling--and then what? Bucky thinks he remembers bones breaking and blood, but those are in so many of his memories that they might be bleeding through. His head feels stuffed and cottony, even in the places where They didn't rip out his thoughts and feelings and identity and filled the hole with void. The cold fog dissipates and the lines of the room appear. 

Metal walls, thick fabric pads covering every inch of the floor. There's a toilet, shower, and sink in one of the corners, a rail with a curtain hanging around it. A camera watches him from the wall, following his movements with quiet clicks. The door is hardly more than a door-shaped line carved into the wall. A detention cell. What a thought. At least it isn't a familiar HYDRA complex--the structure is different, the cell is more open, and there's even a bed with a mountainous quilt against the wall. 

Bucky goes through the warm up procedures on his hand and arm, stretching and stimming to check every plate and component. Nothing's out of place. How did they get him here? He doesn't feel any injuries or bruises. He's even in a lightweight mint uniform that resembles scrubs. Did he give up willingly? Why can't he remember what happened? And of course, the one question that echoes in his mind more than all the others--where's Steve? 

He takes a deep breath, a loud chill filling his throat and ears and head, his chest balloon-light and full of helium. It makes him cough and cough and cough, slumping against the wall for support. There's an ice-cold, tight steel band around his first ribs and it squeezes like a hand trying to break off his airflow. Bucky's mind flashes through vague memories, too real to be fake but too distant to be his own, of his face breaking through ice and pressing, being pressed, against the smooth bottom of a container full of water. There's a phantom hand gripping the back of his head, pulling on his hair to steer him. 

Bucky coughs again, hard enough that he almost vomits. The aching hole inside of him, that powers his unwilling body, burns like dry ice. 

"Would you like something to drink, Mr. Barnes?" 

He startles violently, on his feet in seconds, clutching a knife that isn't there. There's nobody else in the cavernous cell. His eyes narrow and his chest rattles. 

"My apologies," says the voice. A smooth, bare panel on the wall behind his bed lights up. Bucky approaches it slowly, shifting his feet across the floor but keeping his weight mostly centered. The varnished flooring burns his bare soles. "I am JARVIS, the artificial intelligence in charge of Avengers Tower." The screen displays a tall structure made of metal and glass. He's seen it before. Who hasn't? It's a prominent difference in the shape of the city; Bucky can't help but look at it when it's in his peripheral vision. JARVIS repeats the request: "would you like a glass of water?" 

Bucky shakes his head "no" and stares at the screen until it goes dark again. He ends up laying on the cot, curled up, heavy blanket folded over him. It's not just warm, it's weighted, and the gentle pressure is so soothing. It reminds him that he's here, he's alive, he's awake. Not as warm as Steve (who probably requested the weighted blanket), but it'll have to do. Bucky falls asleep and doesn't dream. 

* 

Steve visits for as long as the security guards will let him. The halls are empty on the basement detainment level, just the guards stationed at each entrance and Steve sitting against a door. The same door, always, cold and white and impersonal and unremarkable. It doesn't even have a number. But it's Bucky's door nonetheless, and that's what makes the difference to Steve. 

His eyes stay on the screen mounted on the wall, watching the interior of the cell in real time. Very little happens. Bucky was swaying and half-unconscious for the first day and a half, and now he's just sleeping or pretending to sleep buried under a heavy blanket. He turns down JARVIS' offers of food and water. Being what he is, he can probably keep that up for another week, maybe longer. But it still worries Steve. 

Bucky has gone back to being completely silent, not even murmuring or screaming in his sleep. He's not even signing at the camera when Steve's around. Sure, sometimes he doesn't talk, but he'll almost always communicate with Steve in some way--letters or sign language or quiet shoulder taps. Now he's just unresponsive. The only sign he's even alive is the graph in the corner of the feed, monitoring his temperature, breathing, pulse, and brainwave activity. 

Steve's nails are down to the quicks and he's losing more sleep than he's getting, waking shaken from the same dreams about snow and snipers and sudden deaths. When he closes his eyes, he can still see the glazed blank stare on Bucky's face back in the hotel room. He's not eating much, either, and it's just a damn good thing that his body can run on self-generated star power alone. Steve purposefully avoids everyone else in the tower, watching the ground and leaving his implant in his room so he doesn't have to talk to anyone. What would he even say? "I'm sorry I'm a wreck, but the love of my life is broken and I don't know how to fix him this time." 

It's still a bittersweet sensation to think of Bucky in those terms--even dancing around the truth with words like "partner" or "significant other." They're both too damn old to play this game anymore. From what Steve can understand of the journals, Bucky feels the same way, always has. Of course he always has--Steve always has. Which of the Starks was it who said something about Steve only having eyes for his "best friend"? It used to be that Steve would avoid those words, avoid thinking about that aspect of their relationship, because maybe it wouldn't exist if he didn't let it. There was that time he was so sick he almost died, the kiss they'd shared in the only bed they had. There were those times at night where Bucky couldn't sleep and had nothing to do with his hands but trace patterns over Steve's skin. There was the endlessly fascinated way he looked at Steve, even when they were kids. They might've kissed a couple more times, too; but they didn't mean anything if Steve never thought of them. 

It was survival, it was fear. But there's still the cold snake in the back of Steve's throat that hisses when he thinks about losing Bucky, having lost Bucky, never allowing the kisses to mean something between them. He watches the feed with distant eyes and decides to say something, anything, about it when Bucky comes back from this. 

If Bucky comes back from this. 

It's frustrating to watch him passively refuse food and water, and irritating every time Steve has to explain that it's technically okay, either of them could go for god knows how long without sustenance or sleep if they had to. Sure, it's not good for them. It makes you the kind of sick where you can hardly move for a week. And skipping sleep for too long makes your brain play like a cracked vinyl record. But Bucky won't die if he doesn't eat for a week or two or three. Steve's already worried enough without having to reassure Stark and his partners that Bucky's still alive. But he's getting more worried by the day, almost by the hour, and he's stopped being able to say anything through the door because he just chokes on it. 

Two weeks of sleeplessness on Steve's part, and either half-consciousness or coma on Bucky's, and SHIELD finally lets him in. The guard who gives Steve the tray of various foods, from the simple to the gourmet, eyes him warily and says nothing as he opens the door. Steve's throat is too thick to say anything and before he knows it, he's inside the mostly-dark room with the door locked once again. His hands shake, making the silverware on the tray clatter. His legs fight him the whole way, but Steve makes it to Bucky's corner and puts the food down before sitting himself. 

He doesn't know what to say for a long time, so he sits in silence by the edge of the cot and the unmoving cold shape under the blankets. Steve takes a deep breath, for composure, and reaches out so his hand is hovering a couple inches over what appears to be Bucky's shoulder. "Hey," he says, voice cracking. "Buck. I-I'm here. I've got food." He receives no response, not even when he tries shaking the shoulder under his hand. Steve looks at the tray, looking at everything crammed together on it. His eyes fall on a chocolate bar, some brand he doesn't know with a fancy Swedish name and fancier wrapped, and he takes it. 

Steve moves so he's no longer sitting, but standing on his knees and leaning over the cot. He peels back the piles of blankets stacked over the weighted one, folding them back over the edge of the cot. Bucky's outline becomes clearer and clearer until he's there at last, laying on his side on the cot, in rumpled scrubs, staring at the white wall with unmoving glowing eyes. If it weren't for the glow, for the rise and fall of his chest, for the quiet vibrations under the plates of his arm, Steve would think Bucky was dead. 

"Wake up," Steve says, shaking Bucky's shoulder again. "Come on, you jerk, just wake up. I've got chocolate. Really fancy chocolate, the good stuff." If he doesn't acknowledge the tears, then they aren't real. He carefully rolls Bucky onto his back, so that vast void gaze is fixed on the ceiling. Steve's hand rests over his heartbeat. "C'mon. Just look at me." His empty hand trails up until he's stroking Bucky's cheek, and everything feels barren and cliche and permanently broken. "You asshole." 

A kiss wouldn't wake him up. A kiss would just make everything seem all the more dreamlike, and in the dark, with the gold glow from Steve's skin mixing with the violet-black from Bucky's, everything is already floating like a nightmare. How do you convince someone they're not asleep? Steve can't quite remember. So he does the first thing he can think of and slaps Bucky's cheek. It's not hard, not to hurt, and it probably won't leave a mark. But there's a sound, and then suddenly an ice-cold hand around Steve's wrist and a glaze of terror over those starless eyes. 

Steve wants to sob. He wants to collapse onto Bucky's chest and cry and cry and cry. God only knows how many tears he's wasted on this asshole already, what difference would a few more make? But there are more important things at hand, like Bucky's moving skin and the chocolate bar melting in its plastic wrapping. 

"What the fuck were you thinking?" Bucky asks, voice slow and slurring, but Steve's heard the exact phrase from that mouth enough times to recognize the words. "I could've--I coulda--" His hand falls from Steve's wrist. "Could've broken your wrist there." 

"I'm not that fragile, you know." Steve can almost feel the glow rolling off him like the tears on his cheeks. He wipes them away before Bucky notices. "You've been out for almost two weeks." 

"I'm not that fragile either." Bucky smiles, or at least gives it a try. His face doesn't feel right. "What happened to me?" 

"Someone shut you down with a--verbal prompt? And you've been... here ever since." Steve doesn't know how to describe it, aside from looking like the place between being fully asleep and experiencing sleep paralysis. The hollows under Bucky's eyes are darker, spreading like bruises, but his face is moving, alive, no longer waxy and stiffened. 

"I've never been awake after one of those," he explains, trying to stretch and failing. His body isn't quite responding yet, and it just gives a weak shudder when he tries to move. "Jesus. Is that what fried my brain?" 

"According to JARVIS." Steve pushes his hair back, an old nervous habit, and starts peeling open the wrapping on the chocolate bar. "I don't think being out for two goddamn weeks really helped you, though." He shoves the half-melted, half-unwrapped candy in Bucky's face. "Here. Eat it." 

"No," Bucky whines, gaze fixed on the chocolate. 

"Yes," Steve insists. "It's been more than seventy years since you last had chocolate. Come on, I hardly ever saw you eat your rations." 

"'S not like there's a reason those keep going missing. Just never get around to having them." Bucky is many things, and one of those things is a good liar. But half-awake with his mind still somewhere else, floating against the ceiling and suffocating the space, his lies come out flat. “Bet they're good, though, everyone else likes them...”

“What, were you saving them for something?” Steve quirks an eyebrow. 

Bucky sounds drunk when he says, “None of your business, you fucking... fancy coffee lover...” 

Steve hums. “So that was you?” he asks softly, eyes tracing Bucky's scars. There are so many new places he has to learn on this familiar body. 

“What's me?” 

“The coffee. Every morning I'd get up and make coffee and find out that someone put chocolate in it for me.” He smiles. 

“You don't look at things before you do them, Rogers. If you did, you'd know the chocolate was already there in the morning.” 

Steve smirks. “Told you it was you.” 

"Couldn't help it. You winced when you tried to drink that coffee." Bucky laughs, but between his dry throat and difficulty moving, it's more like a raspy cough. "You looked like a kicked puppy, you know that, Rogers?" 

"At least it wasn't as bad as Stark's coffee." Maybe if he does well, SHIELD will eventually let Bucky move up to Steve's floor. Steve has a couple of spare bedrooms, but there's a very large bed in the main bedroom that looks to be the perfect size for the two of them. "I'll make you try it when you can come upstairs." 

"They're letting me out?" 

"Not yet." Steve pushes the melting chocolate a little closer. "You have to eat and recover, first." 

"Fine, I'll take the fucking chocolate." Bucky snatches it out of Steve's hand. "Mind holding me up?" 

"Never," says Steve, and he means it more than anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so i totally forgot to post this last week and,,, aaa so i'm doing a double update to make up for that, expect chapter 8 in a few minutes!!! 
> 
> as always love and tys to my boyf ven and my friend rae for inspiring me.
> 
> (also the thing's been done for a while now hehehe... it's 26 chapters including the epilogue, around 60k words. have fun.)


	8. what you fear in the night in the day comes to call anyway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky isn't getting better. Steve despairs. Tony uses a lot of computer words and Natasha explains some of them, to Steve's annoyance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: a lot of brainwashing talk, computer mumbo-jumbo, starks ahoy

It's like there's a brick wall between Steve and Bucky, and all he can do is shout at it and hope some of what he's saying gets through. His words, his reassurances, his physical comfort is all wasted on the unfocused glaze of dark eyes fixed on the ceiling. There are moments where Bucky hears, and listens, and talks, but they're bizarre in that he sounds like nothing happened. Like the past several decades were a bad dream and they're sharing a bed in France, “you know, just in case you somehow get sick again, because you would.” 

Steve's at a complete loss as to what to do. 

There are so many times he can't take it, when he can't bear to leave Bucky's side but so lost, so stuck and helpless that it isn't helping either of them. Time has lost its meaning. It seems like there's always someone in the communal kitchen, making coffee or tea or sandwiches. Hell, there was one time he went up and Clint was in there, making omelets like it was nothing. When Steve asked, Clint said it was 3:30 in the morning. 

Everyone's used to his desperate, help-me-I've-lived-off-of-nothing-but-coffee-and-sorrow-for-like-two-weeks face by now. He doesn't have much to say to anyone, even when they're sitting across the table from him. At least they all know how he takes his coffee—the ridiculousness of Tony swatting him away from the coffee contraption to make runny coffee grounds with cream and sugar is a little beyond Steve's comprehension. At least Tony got rid of the sugar sachets and cups of creamer. 

Nothing changes. Bucky doesn't give, and Steve's starting to lose time in the dark detainment cell in the basement. It's a slight improvement to Bucky trying to kill him, but it's far from ideal. Being conscious would be better than this, even if he didn't talk. Steve alternates between wanting to snap the neck of whoever thought it was a good idea to use one of those codewords in the first place and wanting to beat his head against the wall. 

One night—or day, it doesn't really make a difference—Steve's trying to take polite sips of the coffee Tony made him without looking too put-out by the taste. Tony's leaning back in his chair, rocking it on its two back legs, his feet propped up on the table. He fiddles with something shiny and metallic, no larger than Steve's fist, that looks like a cross between a ring puzzle and a very small motor. Tony frequently talks at Steve, even when sound is fuzzy nonsense and lips are different languages, but tonight, he's silent. He's got enough to take care of without the sleepwalking assassin and ragged-run captain. 

Stark suddenly swings his legs off the table and plants them on the floor, righting his chair, making Steve look up. He says something, but the only thing discernible is “Rogers, catch.” Then, the whatever the hell it is flies through the air at Steve, who only barely catches it. The gadget's surface is mostly smooth, solid, several rounded tube shapes crossing over each other. Up close, it looks more like a mess of wires, or maybe even a metal heart, than anything else. 

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” Steve asks, looking up and reaching behind his ear to turn his implant on. 

“Figure it out for me.” 

“Figure it out yourself,” he half-snaps, making to throw it back to Tony. 

“Hold your horses, Cap.” Tony takes a long sip from his cold mug, like he's downing all the shitty coffee in one gulp. “What I like to do, when I have a problem, is talk it out with someone and see if they know what to do.” 

Steve makes his best you've-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me face, undermined only by the bruises around his eyes and under his cheeks. “Wouldn't JARVIS be able to, y'know, actually listen to everything you're saying?” Tony enunciates clearly enough, and his face is expressive, but he uses words that Steve just doesn't know and can't puzzle out. 

“Nah.” He leans back in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach. “Sometimes it doesn't even matter if they're listening.” 

“Then go ask Pepper.” 

“She's out of town, starting...” Tony checks his wrist (as if he'd ever wear a wristwatch), then asks JARVIS for the time. It's 4:45 AM. “...two hours ago.” 

“Then go ask Rhodes.” 

“Also out. On official War Machine business.” It's kind of a thing, among the residents of the upper half of the tower, that Tony only ever says War Machine and never Iron Patriot. It's a bizarre kind of inside joke, but it least it makes more sense than everyone trying to egg Clint when he's in the kitchen. 

“Well, damn, guess I'm the only other person left in the entire tower.” Steve stands up and makes for the coffee machine, dumping the thin sludge Stark calls “coffee” into the industrial kitchen sink. Tony says something, but he doesn't bother to try and figure it out, let alone turn around to watch his lips. He is so far past the point of giving a damn about anyone other than Bucky. “Though I think Natasha would kill you if you stepped foot on her floor when she was asleep.” 

Tony says something that sounds an awful lot like, “yeah, she's like that.” 

Steve finishes assembling his coffee—real, decent, coffee—and takes it back to the table. It's still steaming hot, so he decides to let it sit. Sure, he could drink it straight out of the machine and not even burn his tongue, but he doesn't need to. When he thinks Steve isn't paying attention, Tony makes and drinks a cup of coffee without even coming back to the table, and then mumbles all of his words like his mouth's gone numb. Nobody comments on that. 

“Couldn't you call Sam?” Steve asks, idly stirring his coffee. “Or even Coulson? Why don't you wake up and bother Fury with this, I'm sure he'd love to hear your latest and greatest idea.” Okay, maybe he's still a little bitter over the hotel situation, but he's too tired to think twice about what he's saying. 

“I didn't say anything, you know.” There's a shadow over Stark's face, eyes cast down at his own chest, fingers knit together. “JARVIS can verify that. Someone checked my finances when I wasn't looking.” 

Steve rolls his eyes and takes a long sip of coffee to avoid having to say anything. When he puts his mug back down, Tony's leaning forward on the table, eyes wide and intent, hair pushed off his face like some kind of hare-brained, electrified engineer. God, it's uncanny how much he resembles his father. “I don't really need help on that.” Tony gestures to the gadget. “I'm trying to offer my, um, expertise at interpersonal problems.” 

“Do you think I'm coming to you for dating advice?” Steve's blown past irritated and he's thinking about taking it out in one of the (seven) gyms. But he doesn't move. 

Tony shrugs and leans back in his chair again. “It's just an offer. Besides, sometimes you figure it out just by talking about it.” He pauses, pushes hair off his face. “Was that too blunt? I'm sorry, Pep told me to be more blunt when I'm not trying to get something out of someone.” 

Steve glances around the otherwise empty kitchen, with its bright white lights and shiny tiled counters and stainless steel surfaces. He looks back at Tony. “Fine. You want the news? You got the news.” He launches into the story, picking off where the official reports and TV stations stopped. How everything was back to normal until he dug up an address. How the door was unlocked and Steve ended up living in a tiny dark apartment for two weeks. Just how badly everything went to shit in the hotel room. 

“Wait, what happened?” Tony asks. 

“I don't know. The guy behind Fury said something I didn't understand, and he just... stopped.” Bucky'd looked like a robot. Face as blank as untouched snow as he walked to the agent's side, docile as a doll when he was cuffed in the manacles. “Like they took him out and just pulled on his strings. He didn't even respond to them.” He didn't even scream when the shock ran up his left arm, disabling it, pushing him to the floor. Steve'd looked into his eyes and found nothing. No malice. No pain, or fear, or killing instinct. Nothing. 

Tony looks over Steve's head, and the feeling of being watched comes over him. He cranes his neck around to see none other than Natasha, standing in the door way in a tank top and yoga pants, arms folded, her weight on her left leg, looking at him like she knows all of his secrets. Which, to be fair, isn't an uncommon look for her. “Sounds like a hard reset to me,” she says, in sign and then out loud. 

“A what?” Steve asks. He's heard the term before, but he can't place it in his head. 

Tony sighs and Steve looks back at him. In his periphery, he watches Natasha approach the coffee contraption and check the filter. She turns her head to sign “thanks” at Steve. His brain is unwilling to move his hands, so he just smiles and winks back. 

“Anyway,” Tony says, bringing Steve's focus back to him. “A cold reboot is when you start a computer from scratch, you turn its power supply on and it undergoes a BIOS and/or UEFI check. No, you don't need to know what those are,” he adds before Steve can even ask. “It's also when you turn a computer off by disconnecting it from a power source, which includes pressing its power button. That interrupts every process currently running, without giving them time to save and shut down.” 

Natasha arrives at the table with her mug (all-black, with her sign on one side and the words “World's Best QPP” in Comic Sans on the other). She bumps Tony's side so he moves his chair over, and she sits at the chair that was just pressed up against Tony's. “They can do that to us,” she says/signs. “It's a last-ditch effort, normally if an agent goes way off the mission or remembers enough to fight back against the other programming.” 

“Because brains work like computers--” Tony begins to explain. 

“I know how brains and computers work, thank you very much,” Steve interrupts. “So They shut you down before things get worse.” 

Tasha nods. She pauses to collect her thoughts. “And then They usually send you to re-education.” She shudders. Steve has never seen her look as scared as the expression that flashes across her face, and he's seen her in some really deep shit. “That's kind of like booting into Safe Mode. It's a pliable state where They can isolate the problem and correct it.” Her eyes go dark. “By whatever means necessary.” 

“Safe Mode lets the system check for problems without loading anything but the core components—you can't do anything that's not necessary for the operating system to function,” Tony says. “It can also allow the system to make an effort at recovering any lost data.” 

“Where does Bucky fall in all of this? He's awake but he's not—here, he's not really himself.” 

“Or anything at all?” Tasha asks. 

Steve nods. “Sometimes he acts like it's still '43. But he mostly hasn't said anything.” 

“He's in Safe Mode and you're trying to run a program from that,” Natasha explains. “Safe Mode's not meant for anything other than troubleshooting and safely doing a warm reboot. Especially not made for running for multiple weeks.” 

“The system shuts down but doesn't lose the connection to its power source. Usually doesn't run the BIOS and/or UEFI either.” Tony yawns, rubs his eyes with the back of his hand. “And then it boots normally, probably stably.” 

“So someone needs to reboot him?” Steve imagines that, imagines it going horribly wrong and Bucky going comatose limp on the cot and those starless eyes never seeing anything again. He has to hide his face behind a sip of coffee so he doesn't look as scared shitless as he feels. 

“Yeah,” says Tony. “And I'd volunteer and everything, but I don't speak Russian, so.” He shrugs. 

Steve looks pointedly at Natasha, who looks down into her coffee. Her fingers tap arhythmically against the sides of the mug. “Could you?” he asks more softly. 

“Yes,” she says. Then, slowly, “I've never done it before. Not to him. That's just something you don't do to your mentor.” She laughs without humor. “But we have the codewords. If we can figure out which code's the right one to use, then rebooting him should be easy.” 

“So go ask Fury,” says Stark. 

“He wasn't the one who said anything. It was the guy behind him, some agent I don't know.” In retrospect, Steve's surprised that the agent watching over Fury's shoulder hadn't been Coulson or Hill. 

“Well, hey, I'm kind of a cypher genius.” 

“You're a whatever kind of genius is necessary right now,” Steve shoots back. 

Tony makes a face. “Yeah, but I actually know what I'm doing here. It's not like I'll have to pull another all-nighter learning.” 

“Do you think you can crack it in one night?” Natasha asks, one eyebrow raised. 

Tony shrugs. “But I can damn well try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully this makes up for forgetting to post last week?!??! AAAAAA
> 
> n-e-way this was a fun chapter to write because i love writing about computerbrain shit and all that. 
> 
> (for those who don't know, QPP stands for quasi-platonic partner; the mug was a gift from Clint) 
> 
> another big shout-out to ven and rae for inspiring me, and carbon for being one of the few people who reads this story and talks about it. ilu all so much <3 <3 <3


	9. we are always searching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm dead certain those sleeping pills Tony has are never going to be relevant ever again, nope, no sir.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: continued tony stark-ery, sleeping pills, general nightmare horror, hospitals, death, parent death mentioned, brief violence near the end. this is a real fun one guys.

The initial rush of optimism in Steve's chest when Tony talked about decrypting the files fades as soon as it's been a week and Stark hasn't had any luck. 

“Master hacker, huh?” he asks the fifth time Tony shows up in the kitchen for coffee that night. 

Stark glares back with tired eyes ringed with circle almost as dark as Steve's. Looking closely, there's the slightest glimmer in his eyes, where his pupils meet his irises, that looks like a bright white star. Steve feels something off, but Tony's pissed enough already. “They used different ciphers on each code. And didn't arrange them in matched pairs.” He turns on the coffee contraption and faces Steve again. “Apparently you have to decrypt all of them and pair the ones that had the same encryption method.” 

Steve sips his cooling coffee, out of words to say. He's been running on fumes since—since everything fell apart. Since the world he had worked so hard to build for himself in the aftermath of his ruined past collapsed around him. At least he still has the Avengers, or most of them, and their significant others, and Sam. He has Bucky again, but Steve's—and Bucky's— 

It's hard to think about Bucky because he occupies so many places in Steve's mind. He's the symbol of friendship, and loyalty, and pain, and anger, and anxiety, and other things that Steve refuses to think about. It's hard to think of Bucky as the half-conscious shell of a being dozens of floors beneath his feet. It's hard to separate his friend Bucky from his enemy the Soldier, but the two images haven't reconciled yet. Steve's mind is a patchwork of familiar skin and new-old scars. 

A tap on his shoulder makes Steve break out of his thoughts and look around the surroundings. Tony stands over him, coffee cup in hand, shaded brown eyes unblinking. "You okay there, space cadet?" 

"Yeah," Steve says. He rubs his face, feeling over his sore eyes and sleepless-thin skin. He's started to look like as awful as he feels. If he could get sick, they would have put him in the hospital by now. Humans aren't built to keep going like this, but he hasn't been human in over seventy years. When was the last time that Steve slept for more than three or four hours in a row? Was it in the transitional apartment, a cool body pressed to his, slow breathing under his hand? 

The image it conjures, the physical sensations it replicates, make Steve feel sick. Maybe it's all the coffee? He's heard it's acidic, heard people talking about how too much of it can trash your stomach lining. That's his explanation for now. His aching body, strained mind, and shifting emotions are all due to too much bad coffee. They're certainly not from the fear that he may never look into lively night sky eyes again, or hear the soothing sounds of a voice he'd though he'd lost forever. As unfair as it was to lose Bucky the first time, to almost die by his hand, it would be so much worse if Steve had him again just to lose him for real. 

As broken as Bucky is, he's broken in all the ways that fit against Steve's sharp edges and bruises, just like he's always been. They've always been able to fit together like that, like blood-stained glass mosaics. Even after Steve became a star system, even after Bucky became a supernova. They fit like there's a reason that they know each other, like they're supposed to lay together in the dark and forget. Steve likes to believe that, anyway. It's some solace that Bucky will comes out of this alive, himself, fractured but not shattered again. How many holes can moths eat in him before he falls apart for good? 

"Stop looking like I killed your puppy," Tony says, bringing Steve back to the present world--the sleek, ultramodern kitchen, the white lights around the edge of the table, the cold-to-Steve but still hot coffee cup in his hands. "Who pissed in your coffee?" 

Steve raises an eyebrow, nodding his head toward Tony. "I don't know, I thought it was you." 

This earns a single, genuine bark of laughter from Stark. He pats Steve's shoulder again. "You should take a break. You deserve it." He yawns and then downs another large sip of awful coffee. Tony looks at his wrist and the table lights up under Steve's hands. In the middle, it reads nothing but 03:41 AM. JARVIS reads the time aloud. "Well, that's enough of a break for me." Tony leaves his cup on the table and stretches. "See you at a reasonable hour." 

"Yeah," Steve says, a little numb. "You too." 

Tony sighs. "I'm not kidding you. Get some rest." He presses his hand on the table. "No alcohol, though, got it?" 

"Tony, I can't get drunk--" 

He winks and lifts his hand to reveal two tiny, chalky pills. "They're legal," he reassures Steve without prompt. "But it's heavy stuff. They're the only thing that worked for me when I..." Tony's hand rises to his chest, over the mundane patch of skin under his clothes. "Figured it'd be worth a shot." 

"Thanks," says Steve, picking up the pills. He examines them and then takes them, swallowing with the last of his coffee. 

"Don't mention it." Tony walks to the door to one bank of elevators, then turns back around to face Steve. "Really. Don't." 

Steve salutes him with a wink before heading for the elevators on the other side of the floor. He's almost dead on his feet when he gets to his bed five minutes later. Tony was right, those pills really do a number on your system. Falling on his bed, on top of the unmade covers, Steve passes out and sleeps for the first time in what feels like another seventy years. 

Thankfully, he has no dreams. 

*

Steve wakes up like he was knocked out cold, and his body feels stiff and heavy. He groans and rolls, trying to find a comfortable position for sleep. But it feels like there's something pulling no matter how he lays, and a damp heat sequesters him. His brain is all steam and darkness and confusion, like he's walking through a thick rainforest in the middle of the summer and he doesn't know how he got there in the first place. How did Steve end up in his bed? How did he actually sleep? 

There's chalk dust at the back of his mouth and the taste makes him remember. Tony, the coffee, the sleeping pills. He must be allergic to something in them, though, because he's stiff like hayfever and the flu used to make him. At least he doesn't feel half as bad as he did when he got sick before. Aside from the brain fog, confusion, and a little worry, he's perfectly fine. 

Steve manages to move enough to look at the clock on his bed side table. He must've fallen into bed at four, five in the morning. The cool blue digits read 01:37. 

"JARVIS," he asks through a sore jaw and gums. "How long was I out?" 

"Twenty hours and twenty-eight minutes." The numbers appear on the side of the table under his clock. 

"Fuck," says Steve, turning his head to his pillow. He swears into the material. That was a whole day he missed, sleeping in his room. That's enough time for Bucky to come back--or go away forever, depending. The scales seemed tilted to the latter. "What do my readings look like?" 

"You're displaying the symptoms of a mild allergic reaction," JARVIS replies, in speech and text. 

"You're calling this mild?" Steve tries to gesture to his body, but he's all constricted by his sheets. 

"Your immune system is far more advanced than that of a typical human." A chart appears on the side of the table, one that Steve's intimately familiar with. In green, the average activity of an unaltered immune system appears as jagged mountains of lines. On top of that line is one in blue, making a steeper peak and then fading off. The blue is Steve's. "The allergens should clear your system by tomorrow morning." 

"Thanks, JARVIS." Steve's eyes feel heavy, heavier still than his body. He rolls over, sheet tangled between his limbs, and succumbs to sleep again. 

This time, he does dream. 

Of long white hospital wards that keep stretching and stretching as he walks through them, the door at the end of the hallway looking farther and farther away. No matter how far, though, Steve can read the name on a small bronze plaque on the door: J. B. BARNES. Above that plaque was a larger one, shiny steel, that has numbers engraved in it. They change whenever Steve looks at it, but they don't matter anyway. He knows the patient behind the door. 

Suddenly, the hallway slams to a stop and he's inches from the door, breath leaving fog on the name plaque. Steve steps back and assesses the now half-open door, then walks into the room beyond. It's very, very dark inside, the kind of dark that sticks to your skin and pulls at the little hairs on your arms and face. "Bucky?" he asks, walking through the darkness. 

It smells like the room his mother died in. There's nothing until he bumps against a hard object and a bed appears in front of him. Laying on it, right arm attached to an IV drip, is Bucky, half-conscious. He's in full Soldier regalia, leather and darkness and all, only missing the goggles. The mask on the lower half of his face looks more like a crumpled hospital mask than anything else. 

Bucky's eyes are the same as they were, forest hazel, staring absently at the ceiling. He looks dead, waxy and pale. Steve reaches out to check his wrist for a pulse, picking up Bucky's left arm (all flesh and bone again) to find it. There is none. 

And then Steve is in an alleyway that extends into darkness from a brightly lit street. The wrist he holds is metal, and there's a humming feeling instead of a pulse. It's a block, Steve realizes--he's blocking a blow from the Soldier before him, starless eyes and all. He tries to dodge, but he's too slow and it grabs him by the leg, making him trip and land face-first on the dirty concrete. And then he's running, running through the dark and getting further and further away from the lit street. The Soldier makes chase, its footsteps making the ground rumble. Or is Steve just shaking in terror? 

Steve comes out on the other side of the alley, into a dimly lit street with air the color of pale syrup. It's the same street, only as it was when he was young, with far fewer lights and cars and less colorful shops. His chest stings and he has to lean forward, breathing hard to fill it. It's not working, he's choking on sepia particles and the world's going dark. 

The Soldier steps in front of him, towering, and Steve recognizes the unfamiliar-familiar hands on his knees, the old slight fog of his gaze, the constriction of a chest that just doesn't work right. It has his shield, but the colors are stripped off it in long diagonal lines like claw marks. Without a word, it lifts the shield over its head and swings down. Steve raises his arms and-- 

Is alive, is back to the new normal, is covered in sweat in the Avengers Tower, staring into the corners of the dark ceiling like the Soldier could be hiding just behind the shadows. He doesn't feel as stiff, thankfully, but his chest is tight and his movements shaky from the nightmare. His senses don't catch up to him for a moment, and then there's half-noise and forms projected above him. 

"Are you alright? You appear to have had an unpleasant dream." 

Steve laughs. He laughs until his chest is sore and he's out of breath. He doesn't know why, but "unpleasant dream" seems like the understatement of the century. It's a dream he's had before, at least in shape and format, but it's never felt so real until now. Dreams can't hurt you, he thinks, but that's also laughable. A dream? That was a dream? 

It felt more like a living nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...would you believe me if i said that this isn't the worst nightmare scene i've written for pse? like. in the least holy shit the second nightmare (in chapter 13) is fucked up and there's a couple Moments after and then you could call the last handful of chapters a nightmare too but they actually happened but, like, what a nightmare. this fic is so intense for me i'm sorry guys. 
> 
> as per the usual, shout-out to my star bf ven and my bgf (best ghost friend) rae. additional shout-outs to copper, autistic bird parent, bunny, and everyone else at home sitting here and reading this. 
> 
> pls tell me if you liked it!! i will glee on you spectacularly! and it will get my ass in gear to write the, uh. secret thing. u kno. since this has been finished since like the 17th. 
> 
> u can contact me off here at d0ct0rd0ct0r.tumblr.com! that is my blog! BELIEVE IT! 
> 
> (quietly whispers that this nightmare scene is better than the one in a certain movie i'm not talking about js~)  
> (suck it jw)


	10. detox just to retox

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve Rogers is really, super, hella gay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for yet more tony starks, addiction talk, that feel when something important from you is taken and you have to live without it, brainwashing m, mind control m, everyone being in gay trauma hell.

"Any luck?" Natasha asks as Tony comes up for his fifth coffee that night. 

"Jesus!" He steps back from her. "You startled me." 

"It's not my fault that you're too tired to see straight." She smiles, learning back in the chair. Her tea is steeping, wisps of steam coming from the cup. It smells like summer raspberries. 

Steve can't help but ask. "Are you sure this is okay for you?" He eyes Tony again--the tired stoop, the gritty bloodshot eyes, the dark places on his face. 

"I'll be fine," he snaps, turning around to make his coffee. With Tasha in the room, Steve knows he won't drink his first cup as soon as it's made. Tony might not think that Cap notices things, but Tasha notices everything. 

Steve wants to tell her that he thinks Stark misses the arc reactor and the feeling of stars in his blood, but he can't figure out how to bring it up. Besides, Natasha doesn't seem interested in talking about any of that part of herself. She's the most normal-looking of them all, at least. Her skin hardly glows, and her suit dampens it to complete darkness. There are stars in her eyes that you can only see when she meets yours (a rarity). There's the finest dusting of gold and silver and blue on her cheeks and brow, independent of the glow, but it's far less noticeable than Steve's almost-twinkling freckles. 

"I've been worse, " Tony adds, shuffling back to the elevator on his side. "I'll see you in a couple hours." 

"If you're still conscious," Natasha calls after him. Steve hides a laugh and she rolls her eyes and switches mostly to sign. "He doesn't really get it, does he?" 

"Get what?" asks Steve. 

"That he's not..." There isn't a word to describe them, that group of engineered and augmented star-people that came after Steve. "That he's not one of us anymore." 

"He always has a cup of coffee as soon as it's made." 

"Yeah, and have you seen his sweaters when he goes out?" 

Steve shakes his head. "I only see him at night. But he's always... he looks cold." He sighs, staring through Tasha for a moment. "I think he may have been addicted." 

Natasha smiles, her vineyard green eyes lighting up. "We're all addicts. He's just the only one whose body doesn't make it for him." 

* 

The next day, as Steve dozes outside of Bucky's door, there's a small commotion down the hall in the basement. He can't hear it, staying unaware until Natasha is striding into his peripheral view, moving with a purpose. She smiles tightly at him and tells him to follow her to Stark's level, he may've made a breakthrough. 

Steve can't get to his feet fast enough. 

He wakes quickly as the elevator slides past almost two hundred levels. By the time the doors open, he's even bouncing on his feet--an old habit he picked up from Bucky when they were kids. Steve was always in awe of him, no matter how much he fidgeted or how little he talked. The slight bouncing motion always seemed to calm him down, when it wasn't a display of happiness. So Steve used it to cheer up, to quell his fear, to remember his friend. He never lost the habit. 

Tasha leads him to a room off the hallway before the elevator, turning several sharp corners at lightning speed. Steve's dizzy by the time they stop in a darkened room, unsure if he could get himself out if he tried. They're surrounded by hundreds of monitors lined up in panels, some grouped together to show a large picture and others showing single graphs and charts. Tony's working at a desk in the back, facing the door with a projected screen coming from the narrow beak on his desk. He finishes something and dismisses it, then turns off the projection by pushing it back into the emitter. 

"What's new?" Steve asks. 

Tasha sits on the edge of Tony's desk, swinging her legs back and forth. When she's off a mission, she never seems to stop moving. "Tony thinks he might've decrypted one of the pairs of codes." 

"Really?" He turns to face Tony. "Is it worth anything?" 

Tony snorts and leans back in his chair, head against the wall. The room is a lot shallower than it looks. "Well, yeah, if you need to kill someone." 

Something hard and sharp stands up in Steve's gut. "What do you mean?" 

"I found the 'kill mode activate' switch." Tony sucks in a breath through his teeth. 

"Oh." Steve's shoulders slump. How was this as important enough to drag him upstairs and make him interact with people? And why is Tasha still half-grinning, legs swinging? 

"That's not all," Tony adds. 

"I may have... bent the truth a little for Director Fury," Natasha explains. "I told him we needed to get Barnes back to normal soon, before the data could become compromised and used against us." 

"And? What did he say?" Steve's stomach hangs over the edge of a cliff. 

"The agent who knew the hard reset code--that's all he knew. He did something there for SHIELD, double agent weapons manager. Not too high, but enough to know how to turn it off." Tasha shrugs. "He says everyone who worked at his level or higher knew that code. Just in case." 

"Just in case" echoed in Steve's mind in Bucky's voice. "So he has no idea how to get Bucky... back?" 

"No, but he was able to tell me some of their cyphers." Natasha grins and holds up a small flash drive. "Actually, he told Fury and I got into the file he sent. So Tony's running them through the list right now." 

"No luck yet," Tony says, folding his hands on the table in front of him. He glows in the light of all the electronics. "But I've gotten descriptions for codes like, 'kill the witnesses' and even a 'play nice' kind of thing. Guess they had one for every occasion." 

"When should we know which one is the right one?" Steve was bouncing faster on his feet, watching Tony intently. 

Stark brought up the projected screen once more and moved around a few programs. He zoomed in on one of them and flipped the image so Steve and Natasha could look at it. A real-time chart, showing a sharply moving green line moving across a white grid. "That's the progress graph," he explains. He taps one of the other programs and it appears in front of the graph. It's a long bar with numbers written over it, moving quickly. About a quarter of it is filled in with dark blue. "That's the progress bar. We should have the list decrypted and sorted in..." Tony flips the screen back to his side and inspects the bar. "Probably by tonight, or noon tomorrow at the most." 

Steve almost jumps for joy and wants to hug Tony. "You're a miracle worker." 

"Hey, Nat pulled the strings and got the info. I just mapped out a program and dedicated most of the system to running it." Tony shrugs. 

Steve smiles at Natasha. "Thank you so much." 

"You're not the only one who misses someone they used to know." She half-smiles in return. "He taught me how to kill."

* 

Steve looks at the ceiling, trying to sleep. The shadows of the room paint shapes on the smooth, blank surface like a canvas. If he unfocuses his vision just enough, he can make stories out of them. Stories about friends, about learning how to fight, about looking into someone's eyes at midnight on a foreign beach and never wanting to leave their side. Stories, too, about knives and murders and the steel-cold stare through the sight that he would recognize anywhere. 

It hurts to sleep and give up to the mercies of his mind, playing back fond memories and moments he'd rather forget against the backdrop of the present situation. Steve doesn't want to acknowledge this, not any of it. He wants to sleep to escape the nightmare that he's in already. 

* 

This time, he's out for twelve hours and he doesn't even need Stark's pill. He hasn't asked for them since the allergic reaction and the fever dream that followed. Steve still dreams, and it still hurts, but nothing feels as real as it did in that one dream. Though he experiences the jolting shock of being shot through the head by a bullet made of ice, it doesn't throb under his skin like a sore. He could swear he felt cuts on his face after that dream. 

Tony wakes him this time, not a fall or a gunshot or a sickening crack. He's bouncing on the floor by Steve's bed like it's Christmas morning. Steve always leaves the light in his room partially on before he goes to sleep; that way, nothing can harm him from the darkness all over. Tony looks blurred and smeared to his tired eyes. 

"What the hell's your problem?" Steve mutters, trying to block him out. "I finally get some goddamn sleep and you--" 

"We figured it out," he says, and suddenly Steve is upright, clear-eyes and alert. 

"Take me down there." 

Steve doesn't bother to change out of his sweatpants and old shirt before taking the elevator down with Tony. It descends in silence, falling and falling into darkness and beneath the ground. At the very lowest floor, it shutters to a stop and the doors open. The security guards hardly even glance at Steve and Tony as they pass, and the door to the cell is unlocked when Tony tries it. Natasha sits in the dark by Bucky's cot, semi-illuminated from below by the light of her phone. Steve sits next to her and Tony behind them. 

"Is this really the code?" he whispers. 

"Yes. According to several standard records, reports, and references, this is the soft reset code." 

Steve takes a deep breath. He looks at the form under the blanket on the cot, staring up at the ceiling through half-closed lids and edges toward it on his knees. It takes a minute, but he finds a hand and takes it. Whether that's more for him or for Bucky, he can't tell. They'll both need comfort. He's down on one knee in the silent bubble of the detainment cell, quiet enough that he's sure the others can hear the idling motors and gears from Bucky's arm. 

Tony stays back. Natasha moves toward Bucky's head, so she doesn't have to shout and startle him. She takes a deep breath, glancing down at her phone, steadying her hands. But her voice doesn't shake  
when she reads out the code, a mix of syllables and phrases that Steve can't make sense of. 

The hand in his grip stiffens, then relaxes again, fully. Bucky's eyes close all the way. For a moment, hardly a half-second, he doesn't move and Steve is sure he's dead. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth, breathing hard. There was a chance this wouldn't work, and... 

Fingers wrap around Steve's palm. He looks, opens his eyes, and Bucky's breathing. Real breaths, slow like he's asleep, with his head tilted to the side and his eyes motionless under their lids. In the moment, he looks like he used to, the first time they shared an apartment. Steve can find the same exact lines on Bucky's face, the gentle curves of his lips and brows, the way his hair falls over his forehead, the way his teeth set when he falls asleep. 

Tasha nudges Steve's leg with her foot, then tilts her head toward Bucky. Steve nods and looks back. He lets go of the hand and reaches for Bucky's shoulder, shaking him lightly. "Bucky?" asks Steve. "Bucky, can you hear me?" 

"What? 'f course I can, lemme go back to sleep." Bucky turns his head away. 

"Who am I?" 

He moves so he's laying more on his side than his back, face to Steve. "You're the goddamn President of the United States," he slurs, eyes fluttering and locking on Steve. "Nah, you're Steve Rogers. You're Captain fucking America. You're miles better."

Steve smiles--beams, really, his whole expression lighting up. "Who's that?" he asks, gesturing toward Tony. 

"The fuck are you trying to pull on me, kid? All I see 's a smug asshole." He makes a face in Tony's direction. "God, this was his fucking idea, wasn't it? How much did I drink?" 

Steve opens his mouth, but Natasha approaches, dropping into a crouch within Bucky's line of sight. "Who am I?" she asks, in that voice, the one she only uses when she's pissed off or trying to intimidate someone. 

"Natalya Romanova," he breathes, eyes closing. "Fuck." Bucky tilts his head back against Steve's arm. He opens his mouth and says something that Steve can't understand. Then he says several more things that Steve also doesn't understand. 

Tasha responds in kind, voice going softer and her speech speeding up. She grimaces at the end of her statement, but Bucky gets his most infectious shit-eating grin on. He laughs softly, then coughs, body still stiff from not moving. Natasha says one last thing that sounds like a question. 

"Nata, I know it's not '43 any more. Hasn't been for a long time." He shifts so he's laying on his back once again. "Can't be '83 either, since Rogers and Stark are here." Bucky tilts his head toward her. "But you're here, so everything wasn't a dream. That makes it... '15? '14? That or I'm dead, but I doubt Cap'd be waiting for me where I'm going. 'S gotta be twenty something." 

"Thank god you're back," says Steve, leaning forward and moving from being down on one knee to standing on both. He's struck with the sudden urge to kiss Bucky, but this would be the wrong time for that. So he settles for pushing sweaty hair out of his face. 

"I'll always come back, asshole. Don't doubt me. When I said end of the line, I meant the end-end." Bucky groans again and curls inward like a wilting plant. "Sorry I thought you were your dad," he says in Tony's general direction. 

"It's okay," says Tony, voice small. 

Steve doesn't move. He watches Bucky start to fall asleep again, breaths slowing and evening, face relaxing. After a few minutes, Natasha stands up and almost has to drag Tony out of the room, leaving Steve and Bucky alone in the dark. But this is the place he'd most want to be, in any situation. "Can I?" he asks, pushing Bucky toward the wall a little. 

"You don't hafta ask." Bucky moves over as much as he can. "Fuck. Feels like I got hit in the head, but a lot more inside." He brings one hand up to cover his ear. "What happened?" 

Steve climbs in beside him, pulling the blankets up to their shoulders. "I'll tell you in the morning," he promises. 

"I'll make sure to be there."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> zsfsdZSDGDGSD i can't even believe i forgot to post this yesterday what a DORK anyway  
> i'm changing the schedule so i update every sunday + wednesday b/c otherwise the year would be more than half through by the time i post the last chapter. i might even bump it up to three times a week depending on how the writing of part two goes. 
> 
> jfc this one was intense though let me tell u. 
> 
> anyway as always endless thanks to my gay boyfriend ven and my gay friend rae for inspiring this. additional thanks to bunny, dirk, foster, carbon, aaaand whoever else reads this. i lov u.


	11. blessed be the boys time can't capture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is very gay and somewhat guilty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for talk about depersonalization, mentions of medical abuse and torture, steve rogers feeling guilty, bad physics, steve rogers being completely oblivious.

Bucky has good days. He can talk and smile and hold Steve's hand like when they first lived together. There are days when there's light in his eyes, distant twinkling stars like mica dusted behind his lens. Days where he mostly remembers before, remembers Brooklyn and Coney Island and the apartment on Flatbush, remembers the taste of the sea in France (and when Steve tells him that people still find relics from D-Day on Normandy's shore, it sends shivers up his spine). There are days when Steve genuinely believes that Bucky has a chance at getting better. 

Bucky also has bad days. Silent and moody and hiding in the shadows, curling away from Steve's almost-burning touch. He's lost, confused, and frightened; he knows he should remember more than the crunch of bones under his boots or the sound of a gunshot miles away, but that's all he feels. There are doctors in military uniforms in his head yelling at him in Russian and code, making his ears ring. There are days where he looks at Steve and thinks of a mission instead of a friend. 

There are also in-between days, which are the most common. Bucky doesn't talk much. His eyes are glassy but not closed-off like the black night sky, his limbs are tense, he hears ringing and an endless loop of murder songs in his ears. But he also stays close to Steve, asks for memories or books, tries to make sure Steve is real. Sometimes, he needs to remember that he's real, too. His mind floats in between a moving war zone in human skin and a childhood under tall buildings and strong arms. Bucky's never sure if either of them are real. He has night shivers and terrors. All of him is doubt. 

Steve's glad that he's eating the food now, at least. Bucky was so sick when he first reset, disorientated and physically ill. He's still suffering from decades' worth of torture and experimentation and electric stars being forced into his veins. Steve watches him closely, even on the bad days where he's confined to a chair in the opposite corner while Bucky rocks on the cot with his hands over his ears. He is made of reassurances--no, I don't hate you--that wasn't your fault--no, I remember it too--don't worry, They're not here--I'm here and you're here and we're both alive. No matter how he phrases it, Steve gushes with euphemisms for "I love you." Their relationship has returned to the shadowy space between words where they hold hands and share a bed and kiss each other's foreheads, but they never talk about that. Bucky is too insistent on "I don't want to hate you"s to ever think to say "I love you." 

Though Bucky eats food and drinks water, he refuses the medicine that Stark sends down with Steve. He turns down everything from the homemade sleeping aid to over-the-counter pain pills. No. This place isn't going to become just another facility to him. He won't let Them push capsules or ideals down his throat, no matter who They are. Just because something inside of him is broken, there's no need to fuss over the breaks and try to patch them back together with white glue. If they can heal, they will heal. 

Steve only has nightmares when Bucky's too tense and paranoid to sleep with someone else and he's sent back to his bedroom. Without cold weight in his arms, or pressed against his back, or tangled in his hands, Steve feels flesh made soft by water and damp soil, sees the animated taxidermied remains of his "best friend" coming at him with a gun, smells disinfectant and rusting and rot. He doesn't try the sleeping aids again, and Tony only offers them for Bucky. Knowing that Bucky is safe, at the very least, lets Steve sleep at night. 

Days and nights blur together in Avengers Tower, where hardly anyone has a schedule and most of the team doesn't officially get up until noon. Nobody knows when Tony or Natasha sleep, only that they seem to be awake for at least four hours in the middle of the night, in the kitchen or elsewhere. In Tony's case, he's usually tinkering with something in one of his many labs. For Natasha, she goes to the highest level gym and either dances or practices fighting forms to work out her energy. That's just how she was built--she doesn't produce much heat or light, making her less conspicuous, but the extra energy coils in her blood and makes her muscles twitch. 

Steve's in the kitchen for a couple hours at a time in between long spans of absence. When Bucky needs space and he can't sleep, he goes to the kitchen. It's a safe place for him. It's quiet, even when there are other people, and the coffee's good (when Stark's not the one making it). He's also not too far from Bucky, a good few floors down from his own room, sitting by the elevator that could take him all the way down in less than five minutes. The kitchen is his sanctuary. 

So it's a little surprising that Steve, who's been camping in and out of the kitchen for a month and a half, has never once seen Bruce. He knows that the scientist lives in the building--Tony's mentioned it a couple of times and his designated floor is occupied. But Steve hasn't seen him since the last meeting after the Battle of New York. Part of him is glad. Since he first read Bruce's files after Fury recruited him for the Avengers Initiative, Steve's felt immense guilt, as though it was his fault that the Hulk happened. Would there be a Hulk if Steve stuck to the shadows? If he hadn't frozen? If he wasn't star-blooded? 

Thinking about the what-ifs only sends him into a spiral that sucks him down, so Steve tries to ignore his guts lined with guilt like lead. 

It's nearing four in the morning and Steve steps off the elevator into the kitchen. He stretches, yawning. His sleep wasn't too horrible, even if was only a couple hours long. All he needs to do is have some coffee, maybe a bite to eat, and go down to check on Bucky. Maybe he can get Bucky to eat if he brings something special. The pantry is the size of a walk-in closet, after all, and Steve's seen countless treats on the shelves. For all that's changed, one of the most jarring things about the future is the variety of brightly-packaged products. He can't tell the difference between the ten brands of painkillers on the shelves. He's pretty certain that some of the variants of the same medication are just the base medication repackaged to sell more. Everything is so bright in the supermarket, and Steve avoids it as much as he can. 

Steve looks up from where he was staring at his bare feet to think and sees that the table is occupied. There's only one other person in the room, and he can't mistake that hair for anyone else. The other person is even wearing brown-purple again. 

Bruce seems the source of the eyes on him and smiles when he sees Steve in the door frame. He puts his coffee aside and tells Steve good morning in awkward ASL Unfortunately, his face stays blank and confused when Steve goes on at length about his state of mind. Oh well. It was worth a shot. Bruce was facing him anyway, though not meeting his eyes, so lip-reading wouldn't be impossible. 

"Sorry," Steve says, crossing the room. "I didn't know you'd be up here." 

"I couldn't sleep," says Bruce, blowing steam curling out of his cup. 

Steve turns around to start up the coffee contraption. He yawns and rubs his eyes, trying to stay on his feet. Physical exhaustion doesn't get to him. It's the emotional exhaustion that's the worst. He thought that waiting for Bucky to come home was hard--he thought looking at a face he knew better than his own and seeing nothing was hard--he never would have guessed how hard distance hits when you're in the same room. There are times Steve wakes up with cold bruises on his neck. There are times he's half-asleep until Bucky rolls over and looks at him with a blank stare of nonrecognition. There are times he's sitting in the chair in the corner, flipping through a billion chain emails Tony sends him, and he feels the laser sharp burn of eyes watching him for a fight. There are times he sees it, the Soldier, in Bucky's face, and there is nothing he can do to stop that. 

The helplessness is probably the worst. He's supposed to be helpful, isn't he? He's supposed to save people and institute freedom. But all Steve can do is watch and hold and whisper, hoping things are getting better but losing track of the days since Bucky's last screaming nightmare, the hours since he last looked at Steve like a predator at prey. 

The coffee machine dings and Steve takes his mug out from under it. Without looking, he adds the right amount of sugar and cream, and he stirs it as he walks to the table. He almost falls into his seat and puts his elbows on either side of the cup, staring blankly into the swirling caramel whirlpool. Everything feels so distant, like he's crossed a veil and now resides in that dark place where They hid Bucky, but he's farther from Bucky than anyone else. Steve can at least talk to Tony and Tasha and Clint and-- 

Yes. Bruce is indeed sitting across the table from him. He can also talk to Bruce. 

He looks perfectly normal sitting there under the bright lights, but the white china of his teacup reflects his faint greenish glow. The files had said something about doubly-ionized oxygen causing the color, but Steve doesn't have the grasp on physics to figure out what that means. All he's been able to gather is that whatever happened to Bruce (the reports never quite specify) involved massive amounts of star radiation, and that's enough to make Steve too sick with guilt to continue reading. 

Steve drinks his coffee so he doesn't have to say anything, looking at the wall a few inches above Bruce's head. His hands shake a little. In the heat of the moment when they first met, Steve didn't have time to think about the past. He was still adjusting to the future, the foreignness of the technology and alien involvement. Now that he's used to it, used to living in a world where most electronic devices can talk to him, he doesn't have the confusion to hide behind. Steve doesn't realize that he's had all his coffee until he's been pouring nothing but air into his mouth for a good few seconds. A little embarrassed, he puts his cup back down. 

Bruce says something. 

“Hm?” Steve asks, looking up but not quite at Bruce. “Could you please repeat that?”

“I don't blame you,” he says, and Steve stares in disbelief until he restates it in sign. 

“Y-you--” 

The door to the kitchen opens and heels clack on the tile floor. Natasha, still in all of her gear, approaches the table. She nods at Steve, then looks at Bruce. “Hey. Have you talked to Tony lately?” 

“Can't say I have.” 

“Well, we just got back from something and I think he wanted to talk to you.” Tasha raises an eyebrow like the sentence is supposed to mean something that Steve isn't getting. 

“Right.” Bruce stands, puts his teacup and saucer on the counter by the sink, then heads for the door. “Talk to you later, Steve. Thanks, Nat.” And then he's gone. 

Natasha sighs and takes his seat across the table from Steve. She lifts her leg to the edge of the chair to pull down a few zippers on one of her boots, then kicks it off on the floor. The same set of motions and she's out of the other one. 

“What's up?” 

“Tony makes so much noise. I can't believe he hasn't got us killed for all of his funny little motor sounds and clanging metal.” She puts her gloves on the table, then runs a hand through her hair to pull out the hair tie. “Would you help me unzip this?” Steve almost flushes, and Natasha just smiles at him. “Don't worry, I don't really care about who sees me in my workout clothes.” 

Steve stands up and hesitantly walks to her. “Clint won't mind if I--?” 

“Clint? Why would he mind?” She wrinkles her nose. 

“I thought you were--”

“Christ, and I thought Yasha was making it up when he called you oblivious.” She still smiles at him. “But I'll let you off the hook since I'm sure what Clint and I have looks weird to someone who predates the use of 'going steady.'” Steve blinks in utter confusion. “Clint's my quasiplatonic partner. It means we're 'more than friends' but not in a romantic way. I'm not interested in other kinds of relationships.” 

“Oh,” says Steve, “that explains that. Um, is there a word for...?” 

“Yeah. I'm aromantic and asexual, and Clint's just...” She sighs. “...really, really unlucky with dating. And a lot of other things.” 

“I kind of noticed the egg thing.” 

Natasha laughs and it almost startles Steve. “I can't believe he's got half the tower doing it now.” She straightens up. “It's only one zipper, down my back.” Tasha pulls her hair over her shoulder and turns around. 

Steve, stuck without a way of understanding most of what she'd say to him if they tried to talk, just walks up to her and puts a hand on her shoulder for leverage. His fingers find the small, smooth pull, and he loses it a couple of times before he succeeds in pulling it down. The zipper goes from the base of her neck to her tailbone. She takes it from there, pulling her arms out of her sleeves and pushing the rest down until she's standing in nothing but a grey camisole and thin, matching shorts. Tasha ties her hair up again and heads for the coffee machine. 

“Stay there,” says Steve, pointing at the chair. He picks up his own mug. “I'll make it for you.” She doesn't say anything, just sits down and smiles. The kitchen goes quiet except for the buzz and bubbling of the coffee-making monstrosity. 

* 

Bucky's asleep when Steve enters the cell, and he's curled into a shivering ball on the bare mattress (Steve had to fight for that, something about safety problems and using the springs, but what would Bucky try with those?) beneath the heavy blanket. He strips down to his underwear and slips under the blanket, pressing himself to Bucky's back and curling around him. It feels so familiar--the sharp, labored breaths, the warmth and cold, the weight around them. For a little while, they can pretend to be in their tiny, unheated flat without having to care about the monsters surrounding them. For a little while, they can be nothing but Steve and Bucky, the initials “SR & JB” carved into a tree (Steve doesn't know who it was, but someone drew a heart around the words), almost-lovers but not quite touching. Steve kisses the back of Bucky's head and falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg you should have sEEN my face when i first looked at which chapter i was posting like "OH YES THIS IS THE GUILT CHAPTER." like i remember this for two reasons and one of them is steve's guilt and the other is nata coming out. steve bby, get a blog and learn new gender and sexuality words pls, bc hardly anyone in the tower is heterosexual/heteroromantic or a binary gender. 
> 
> ummm the doubly-ionized oxygen thing is based on real not bad science! most of the time when you see green stars, it's an optical illusion, but there ARE green nebulae whose color comes from doubly-ionized oxygen, aka "nebulium." wiki has a little bit about it. thank goodness for quick physics lessons on wikipedia. 
> 
> anyway this is also a day late sorry... i have trouble with days rn. 
> 
> as always, shoutout to ven and rae for the inspiration i love u both so much!! aaa. and, for encouragement: carbon, bunny, foster, birb friend (i am sooo sorry i forgot your name T_T), my mom, dirk, and all the rest of you viewers at home!! lov u!


	12. i know one day we will sleep for days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cuddling, long discussions, and finally properly meeting Agent Latour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for mentions of dissociation, death, blood

"Y'know," Bucky says, eyes closed, head laying on Steve's lap, "I bet I'd feel a lot more human if I wasn't stuck in here all day." Sure, the cell is roomy and nice. He doesn't make a lot of a mess. Everything works fine. They even replaced it both times he broke the mirror (and only the first one was an accident). Steve's with him as often as he can handle. But it's hard being trapped in the same room and just your thoughts, eternally echoing off the walls and around your brain. He feels almost heatsick. 

Steve dog-ears the book he's reading and puts it down next to him. His fingers comb through Bucky's hair, untangling the small knots he finds. He always used to say that Bucky'd look great (or even greater) with long hair, but it wasn't nearly the style then. Now, though, he can just tie it out of his face without getting threats for having long hair and spending all his time in Steve's company. "I'm trying." Steve sighs and idly runs a hand down the side of Bucky's face. His lines are familiar, even where they're interrupted by scars. 

"Tell Fury that I'm gonna kill someone if I'm stuck in here much longer." He snorts. The room goes silent except for their breathing. "Which was a joke," Bucky adds, heart pounding in double time when he thinks SHIELD may take it seriously. He rolls toward Steve and hides his face. 

"He's not--it isn't him. Fury's just worried because Agent Latour--"

"Who?" 

"Agent Latour. He's the guy who was a double agent when SHIELD didn't know HYDRA was still around. Guy's probably one of the most HYDRA-savvy guy we have, aside from you." He pokes the tip of Bucky's nose. 

"Only sometimes," he says. Bucky has maps and diagrams and formulas and instructions and medical records all etched in his head. When he isn't all the way there, on that side of the dark, it's hard to access them without a blur like he's looking at them through snow. "I mostly hear screaming when I think of that place." He's smiling, but it's just on the edge of forced. The lines in his face pull at his scars. 

Steve makes a noise. "Touch okay?" 

"Touch fine." 

He folds his arm between them to rub Bucky's shoulder, slowly massaging it. Tasha taught him that one. She's been keeping an eye on the cell during those endless days and nights when Bucky's too far away to deal with being around Steve. Seeing a familiar face helps, be it his former mentee or his best friend. 

Bucky closes his eyes and relaxes against the pillows. He starts drifting off, into a content and peaceful space, when Steve rubs against the bad graft on his shoulder blade, the one he keeps scratching at. That startles him back to full consciousness. "Fuck!" 

Steve stops when he sees Bucky's eyes open. "Sorry." 

"No, no, it's okay." He rolls onto his back, laying flat on the mattress beside Steve. Bucky rolls his shoulders. "I've just been bothering that one." 

"They have medicine for that, you know." Steve unfolds his arm and seeks out the cool metal of Bucky's left hand. He entangles their fingers, receiving a gentle squeeze in return. The arm warms quickly against Steve's body heat. 

"I don't trust them." 

"I know." Steve's occasional helplessness makes him want to scream. "Is there anything I can do?" 

"I'm gonna try and sleep." He pulls the blanket up to his shoulders and breathes consciously. Steve starts to move, to get up and let him sleep in peace, but he stops him. "Stay?" It's barely a question. 

Steve tucks himself under the blanket, too, laying on his side and watching the rise and fall of Bucky's chest. He reaches out to rest his hand on a heartbeat more familiar than his own. With the cold against his side, he rolls onto his stomach while keeping a hand on Bucky. Their breathing synchronizes and Steve's out before he knows it. 

* 

Clint flips pancakes as well as he shoots arrows, making them perfectly golden brown on each side with the right consistency between. He piles them onto several plates sitting to the left of the griddle. Behind his back, Natasha and Steve take advantage of the fact that he can't see them to talk privately. 

It's not even about Clint, necessarily; mostly, they talk about Bucky. How does he act when he's around Natasha? How is that different from being around Steve? What does that say? All these weeks, Steve and Tasha have worked informal shifts to keep an eye on their best friend and former mentor, respectively. She takes the chair in the corner when he's having a bad enough day that he can't see Steve. Nata is safe--though she's not a handler or superior, Bucky trusts her instinctively from years of training her. He knows what to expect from her. His own actions frighten him sometimes, so it's good to know what to expect. 

Steve takes over on the good days and most of the in-between days. Bucky doesn't let him take the corner chair. If the urges become to strong, he's the one who perches on it, watching Steve sleep with dark-glowing eyes. The rhythmic movement of Steve's chest is familiar and calming from years of watching it for irregularities. There are times he's still amazed to see Steve breathe so smoothly, so easily. The wonder he discovered sharing heat in the bunkers hasn't worn off yet. 

Some nights that's where his head is still, and he's troubled by the void tickling his skin like it's crawling over him, taking him over, lapping him up slowly. There are times where he doesn't know where he is, or when he is, or who he is, and clings to Steve just for warmth and comfort. Even on some of his worst days, Bucky doesn't leave Steve's side. No matter how often he dreams about spilling blood and tearing the other man apart, there are times when he simply needs Steve. 

Halfway through Natasha's report on the past night, her hands go silent. She jerks Steve closer to the wall by his shoulder and collar. He moves just in time to see a small, roundish thing soar through the air and hit Clint squarely in his side. Motion by the door draws Steve's eyes, and there he sees Sam holding some kind of aluminum foil and soda bottle rocket launcher under his arm as he high-fives Tony, grinning. Tony's eyes sparkle. 

Clint doesn't move from his pancakes, just shoots a glance at Tasha over his shoulder and returns to flipping and stacking and pouring. He's filled one of the big pots that makes enough spaghetti for most of the team with pancake batter that he measures and pours without looking. At his look, Natasha passes by Steve, one of the most delightedly cruel looks on her face. He's almost afraid for Sam and Tony. 

Steve catches a few words from the conversation--Natasha's teasing "boys," her threatening tone, her laughter. Sam and Tony are still horrified. She asks a question and Sam hands her the makeshift egg-throwing device, which she snaps without a second thought. Tasha tosses it to Steve, who pushes it into the garbage. One more statement, and both Tony and Sam are turning back toward the elevator, looking at their shoes. She dusts off her hands and rejoins Steve at the table, apologizing as she sits. 

Steve assures her that it's fine--she mentioned something about the eggs the other day, didn't she? What's up with people throwing eggs at Clint? Where did it start? Why? 

Tasha smiles broadly. She had her reasons for throwing eggs at him a couple of times, and once Tony caught her doing it, he joined in without an invitation. Clint doesn't mind it, but it's a mess to clean off the floor and his clothes. 

That doesn't answer all of Steve's questions, but he thinks he might be prodding too far if he asks about anything else. Besides, Clint unplugs the griddle and turns around with a plate in each of his hot-gloved hand. He sets them on the table. The pancake stacks must be at least a foot tall, composed of twenty-something pancakes. He tells them to enjoy and takes off, as he does, into the shadows. 

Natasha calls him a melodramatic nerd, almost making Steve choke on his pancake. 

* 

Reshuffling his conversation with Natasha in his head, Steve absently stacks and straightens and stacks and straightens the small deck of index cards in his shaky hands. Two chairs to his left, Tasha sits with one leg crossed above the other. The leg on the floor bounces up and down, and her fingers play invisible notes on a piano on her thigh. The idle motions make Steve think of Bucky. 

The thought makes him doubly sick and light inside. Bucky is--incredible, for all of his fuck-ups and unconscious bad habits and bad dreams. That's why Steve's here, after all, in both the literal and figurative sense. He's waiting to talk to Agent Latour and Director Fury to plead Bucky's cage and let him have some activity around the tower. And Steve--Steve would not be breathing if Bucky (he's sure it was Bucky, nobody else would have been able) hadn't saved him all those months ago. If Bucky hadn't saved him all those years ago in cold rooms and colder skin. It's funny to think that his human heater's the cold one of them, now. But it all balances out. 

After the longest while in known history, the door to Director Fury's office opens, and a security guard ushers them inside. Beyond the door is Fury's desk, where he sits, flanked by Agents Latour and Hill. Steve has seen Agent Latour exactly twice--the night in the hotel room and the time Tony tried to get secrets off him. He's tall, thin, and impressive-looking, with an angular face. His smile is tight, and it's hard to tell whether he's faking it or his face just doesn't work that way. His shoulders are squared and his posture is neat, orderly. There is not a wrinkle, crease, or speck of dust on his standard issue SHIELD agent uniform. 

"Director Fury," Steve greets, nodding his head toward the man. "Agent Latour, Agent Hill." He nods at each of them in turn and then takes his seat. Latour doesn't return the gesture, his smile as carved and tight as ever. But his eyes, smoky off-green-blue, see right through Steve. Natasha also greets them before sitting in the chair to Steve's left. While he's maintaining his posture--partially to make him seem more professional and convincing, partially because his muscles are tight with anxiety--Tasha leans to her right, elbow resting on the arm rest, one leg crossed over the other. 

"Captain Rogers," Fury replies, "Agent Romanov. It's nice to see you today." He lacks the usual dry humor in his tone. He shuffles through some papers and straightens them on the desk in front of him. Steve can't let go of his own notecards. Fury glances over Steve's shoulder to ensure that the door is locked before continuing. "We're here to discuss the housing arrangements for our current detainee. Now, according to these two," he says, pointing to Steve and Tasha but neck craned to address Latour, "believe that Barnes is stable enough to have more control over his situation." 

Latour's face doesn't change. "There is no point where he would be considered remotely stable enough to live outside of a specialized holding environment. It would only take a few words and the as--he would kill everyone in sight. We cannot risk that." 

"No, we can't," Fury echoes. He looks at Steve. "What do you think?" 

Steve flips through his sweaty, smeared notecards until he finds the right one. "He didn't hurt anyone when his mind was reverted to his time with HYDRA, sir. And I assure you that he's never touched me without my permission." 

"I can back that up," say Romanov, sitting up straight. "Barnes is reliable. He talks about bad thoughts, but he has never once acted on them." 

"I beg to differ, Ms. Romanov. We lost four agents in the fight at the hotel. It may not sound like much, but considering we're working with only so many agents, they were valuable." His smile doesn't falter or even twitch. It's hard to believe he's real. "Any further confrontation would doubtlessly lead to more unnecessary loss of life. We are talking about a man who can only fight to kill and is literally incapable of doing otherwise." 

"And killing him wouldn't count as 'unnecessary loss of life'?" Steve asks, barely able to hold the flood of anger in the back of his throat. "Bu-- Barnes isn't going to fight anyone, unless he's provoked." He spares a derisive glance at Fury out of the corner of his eye. 

"And what would it take to provoke him, Captain Rogers?" Latour's voice softens. "I've seen him in action as the asset--" 

"So have I! That isn't him--" 

"Quiet, Rogers," Fury cuts in. He nods at Latour to continue. 

"I've seen the way they built him to work." For the first time, the tight smile is gone from Latour's face. The lines on his forehead and cheeks become more pronounced, pulled downward by time and fear. His eyes are wide, almost bulging out of his head, and one can only imagine the horrors playing out before his eyes. "There's a reason we dealt with him in the armoury. That is no man. That's a weapon." 

"So am I," Steve says. "So is she," he look at Natasha, who nods. "So is Banner, technically. So is Tony, at least when the suit's concerned." 

"You're all on our side, Captain Rogers." Latour smiles again, weakly. There's wear around his eyes, tiredness. "And the code words that would affect Agent Romanov aren't public knowledge." 

Tasha shakes her head. "It took half a month for Tony to decipher one of those codes." She fixes the wall behind Latour with a cold, hard stale. "There isn't a lot different between Barnes and me." 

"You've made a successful mental recovery, Agent Romanov--" 

"And Bucky's on his way there," Steve cuts in, one more time. 

Latour frowns and folds his hands in front of him. He looks as though he's about to talk, to add something, but a meaningful glance from Fury keeps him quiet. "We don't have enough to know whether or not Barnes is safe," Director Fury says. Behind him, Agent Hill nods. "It wouldn't be the smartest thing to let him leave his cell at will, but it's inhumane to keep him stuck there." 

Steve takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, waiting for the worst. 

"Sergeant Barnes is permitted to leave his assigned cell as well as the detainment floor, but only if accompanied by one of you. He may not leave the 50th floor kitchen. Do you understand that?" 

Tasha and Steve manage to say, "yes, sir" at the exact same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact my fancast for agent latour is boingydoing coralbother. so imagine that kind of stiff smile for him. 
> 
> AAAAAHHH THE NEXT CHAPTER IS SO INTENSE I'M DYING THINKING ABOUT IT
> 
> anyway~ pls send all fan mail to my beautiful bf ven & my amazing younger twin rae for inspiring this. also shout-out to carbon, bunny, foster, birb friend, aaaand anyone else who's reading this (also i'm sorry that my mind forgot you)! i love you! you are my favorites.


	13. it's a strange way of saying that i know i'm supposed to love you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *a mixtape that is just fourteen hours of me screaming*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: violence, nightmares, death and ghosts, heights, falling, *screams loudly*

Bucky can't sleep. 

No matter how he tries or what he does, his overworked mind refuses to silence itself and stop turning and turning and turning. Every thought is like a hot coal added to a raging fire until it all burns cold and takes the world with it. There's a burning behind his eyes that clouds his vision like smoke and static. His mind rages all the time with blood and war, reliving sticky dark nights in Ukraine at the same time as cool French coastal mornings. Steve goes from friend to enemy, from stranger to target, mystery to the person he knows better than himself. And all day, itching at the back of his mind, his old name, the name, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky. 

He's not used to it yet. 

Nata is a shadow to him, a flitting apparition watching him with sharp electric camera eyes in the corner of the room. She doesn't talk much. They have a mutually-understood silence, the kind that comes from years of synchronized fighting and training, from having brains that worked the same way before whatever They stuffed inside to destroy free will. His silence with Steve is different--it's tense most of the time, rather than understood. Bucky and Nata (he's Yasha to her) speak the same language. 

Steve is completely alien to him once more. When he's in the cell, it's Bucky who feels like a shadow. A ghost, lying on the mattress, making no indentation and leaving nothing but a chilling of air where his body is. The language they share is the same, constructed out of hand movements and short questions and timed silences, but it's been years since either of them have used it. Trying to speak it is like grasping at straws for an empty memory, something that should be there but isn't quite. There is so much space in his head where there used to be pieces of his identity, his memories. 

Yet Steve treats him like he hasn't changed, though maybe he's more careful. Bucky sure as hell doesn't feel like himself, but he doesn't remember what it felt like to be Bucky Barnes. If Steve treats him like Bucky, then maybe he's still that person somewhere. Maybe there's still hope for him. 

That doesn't make it any less hard when he wants to kill Steve. Steve, who trusts him like a fool, who sleeps defenseless beside an living rumor of an international assassin with a known mission to kill him. Steve, who doesn't begrudge the invisible knives in his hands that he's used to kill Steve so many times in his head. 

Bucky does not want to hurt Steve. Now that he's more balanced in his head, he can overrule the instincts telling him to strike the finishing blow and report to HYDRA. But he doesn't want to, he can't bring himself to, there's no way he's going to kill Steve. 

Maybe that's why Steve trusts him. When he's himself, he's consciously not a weapon. 

* 

For all the tips and tools he's learned over nearly a hundred years of insomnia, Steve still can't force himself to fall asleep, not when his head is buzzing and imaginary cold bites at his fingertips. He's just as overheated as usual, but he curls up under a heavy comforter and pulls it tight around himself anyway. It keeps out the cold that tries to seep into his bones and leech out his warmth, his light. The face he imagines when he thinks of the creeping chill makes him sick. 

Though he's sorely tempted, Steve doesn't try Tony's sleeping aid again. The allergic reaction and pseudo-fever dream that followed aren't worth half a day of sleep. Besides, it looks like Tony might need them more. The man's running himself ragged trying to patch the hole in his system where somebody broke in and checked his finances when he wasn't looking. Now that the more immediate problem of Bucky's brain function isn't looming over him, he's obsessed with fixing, fixing, fixing whatever it was that let someone slip through. 

Steve stares at the ceiling, thinking of all the other bodies sleeping above and below him. He wonders if Tony's sharing a bed with his partners—or if they're sharing a bed while he works his body into ruin. He wonders if Natasha is on her floor, or if the nightmares were bad enough that she took the lift up to the topmost floor where Clint resides. He wonders what Bruce is doing—probably sleeping, considering he and Steve are keeping almost opposite hours. He wonders if Bucky's okay, if it's worth a trip down to the secure zone to check on him. 

He almost asks JARVIS to project a feed from the detainment cell, but he ultimately decides against it. Steve knows how it feels to be watched. And, though he doesn't know it to the same extent as Bucky, he knows how it feels to be blocked in by paranoia. Bucky wouldn't mind, so to speak, not since he's trained to keep his door unlocked at all times, but it would be rude of Steve to presume. He wants to let Bucky decide as much as he can. 

The shadows in the big, empty master bedroom start playing tricks and Steve rolls over to ignore them. He stares at the big expanse of empty wall before him like he's trying to find God in drywall and paint. He stares until his eyes start to burn. He stares and he finds nothing. Under the blanket, Steve counts his fingers over and over and over again, just to have something to do. The repetition is soothing. He closes his eyes to darkness. 

Just as he's about to drift off, something in the room around him changes. The air pressure, the presence. The ambient temperature drops by about ten degrees Fahrenheit, but Steve can hardly tell from under the comforter. There are eyes on his back now, piercing like blades, and he rolls over, dreading what he'll see. 

Bucky stands in the door frame, leaning against it in a flat attempt to imitate casualness. His eyes are open wide, glowing like the moon from the expressionless, scarred field of his face. His hair's short, like it used to be, combed to the side, dark-dark brown like he just showered. He's wearing pale blue jeans and a familiar shirt that looks a little too big on him. He beckons with his right hand, the barcode numbers tattooed on his wrist looking like void seeping into his skin. He beckons, and Steve gets up. 

They don't speak, don't touch. Bucky leads him through the winding halls of his private floor, past rooms and rooms full of nothing but dust. Who the hell needs this much space? Steve wonders, and not for the first time. The door to the centermost room is open, and Bucky walks into the darkness, melding with the shadows until he's nothing but a dark-glowing silhouette in the gloom. And, like a fool, like the loyal loverboy fool that he is, Steve follows him. 

There are no lights in the large living room that's haunted by the dead. Steve can see the ghosts of his friends, lounging on the couch, talking on the loveseat, browsing through the empty bookshelf. He sees his mother like an imprint in dust, sees her watching him with big proud eyes. He sees a kid, sixteen or seventeen at most, with overgrown hair in his face and a skinny cigarette in his mouth. The kid's eyes, bright and real and hazel-to-green, follow him as he walks toward the window. 

Bucky, as he is now, stands at the window, leaning forward on the sill, watching the bright lights and shadows of the city below them. On the horizon, against the sea, the sky's starting to turn bloody pink. He watches, still as a statue, face blank and eyes too large for their sockets. Skin pulls tight over his cheekbones, making shadows in the hollows of his face, and Steve wonders when his friend became the hungry, blank thing before him, poised like a nuclear reactor ready to go off when someone enters the passcode. 

He looks at Steve with his huge black eyes, and says that he misses the lights from when they were kids. He misses the lights when they were yellow and red and blue and blurry warm, that the bright crisp glow of the city doesn't feel like home. Steve nods along, not opening his mouth for fear of saying the words that will set him off. Bucky climbs onto the windowsill and reaches up, barely touching the top edge of the glass. There's a soft click and it swings outward like a door. 

Steve climbs up on the windowsill with Bucky, staring at the wrought iron curls of the fencing around the small terrace in front of the window. It's just large enough for the two of them to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. They say nothing. They're silent even when Bucky looks back at Steve with a wordless, hollow smile and steps onto the concrete attachment to the tower. It's safe, he declares. He winks, his forest hazel eyes glazed-over and reflecting the light of the city. Bucky offers a hand. 

Taking his hand, Steve steps from the windowsill to the terrace, and for the first time he realizes how high up his room is. The tower behind him stretches halfway to the stars, so long that it warps and bends over the clouds. He can't see the top. He's not sure he wants to. Bucky, pale-faced and drawn, leans on the fence and looks down. The street below is wide and busy, cars swarming the intersection. People walk on the sidewalks, never looking at each other. The windows are all boarded up, the lights are low down there. 

Bucky tells Steve that he misses being those people. Steve asks if they aren't so much better now that they're halfway the stars themselves. Green eyes close with familiar laughter and Bucky reaches for Steve's hand. For once, for the first time, Steve lets him take it. 

His stomach flips upside down as the cold hand around his jerks him forward, pulls him up and over the edge of the fencing. It's all that's solid around him. Below his feet, the street stops and everyone looks up with faces like black holes. The teenager whose thin fingers grasp Steve's hand smiles with supernova eyes. He asks Steve if he wants to know how it is to fall, and releases his hand. 

Steve lands in his bed, jerking into alertness with the all-too-familiar sensation of falling. There's no breath in his chest, and he has to suck in the air to see clearly. He can taste blood in his mouth and feel frostbite at his fingertips. Shivering, Steve glances around the empty room. He sits up. “JARVIS, what time is it?” 

“Four seventeen.” 

“How long was I asleep?” 

“Two hours and thirty-six minutes.” 

He breathes slowly, taking sips of air like he's about to vomit. His hands shake, his arms feel numb and heavy. The atmosphere around him slowly settles into something familiar and almost comfortable, something real. Steve can feel the goosebumps melting from his skin. He combs hair out of his face and his hand comes back sticky with sweat. He blinks until the tears in his eyes are all gone. 

Steve doesn't bother to find shoes or cleaner clothes, leaving his bedroom and walking down the straight hallway to the foyer. He doesn't look through the open double-doors to the living room. Ghost eyes make the small hairs on his body prickle. From the foyer, Steve takes the elevator down, down, down, into the depths of the tower and even the earth itself. His head is blurry, he feels like he could use a migraine pill, and breathing still isn't easy. But he steps into the long hallway when the doors open. 

The hall stays the same length as he walks to the last cell in the block, and Steve thanks god for small favors. The door's locked, as it should be—he tries the handle three times to check—and unlocks when he lets the small camera by the cell number read his retina. There's a click as the door opens. 

From within the darkness, Bucky perches on the chair, watching Steve enter. He ignores the instinct to roll, find cover, stalk and out-maneuver his target. Dammit, Steve, why are you here? Why now? Why can't you wait on the other side of the glass and watch the zoo like everyone else? Steve looks like an oversized wounded bird clutching its broken and bleeding wing. The air smells like blood, at least to Bucky, and it fills his senses with the kill code. 

The Soldier lunges and Steve steps to the side, startled, spinning around to see where the shape in the dark went. It sneaks around him and pounces once more, hitting him square in the chest (that'll knock him down, that'll break his little asthmatic lungs) and knocking him to the floor. Cold hands reach out from the darkness. 

In a flash of blue lights and glowing freckles, Steve pins the Soldier's arms to its sides with a crushing hug. He rocks forward, the momentum making its legs collapse at the knee until they're kneeling. It struggles, it struggles, it struggles, and then it leaves Bucky limp in Steve's arms. He says something, muffled by Steve's shoulder. 

“Nice to see you too,” he says when Steve pulls back a little. 

“Do you mind if I stay?” 

“Be my guest.” 

Steve releases Bucky, who stands and almost falls again. He takes the metal hand offered to him, Bucky pulling him to his feet until they're standing face-to-face in the dark room. Their heartbeats fall in sync with their breathing until it sounds more like there's one very loud person in the cell instead of two people. 

The moment stretches on, Steve's hand in Bucky's, and he hesitates and wonders. But Steve is sick of wondering, discards the thought and the dream. He leans in and smashes his face against his friend's, foreheads colliding before their lips meet in more of a desperate crash than a kiss. But it's the thought that counts, isn't it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *continues screaming*  
> *screams and screams and screams* 
> 
> dedicated to the boyf, ven. big shoutout to rae for helping inspire this. additional shout outs to bunny, carbon, foster, birb friend, and all you people at home!!!!
> 
> *keeps screaming*


	14. some secrets weren't meant to be told

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a reaction occurs and not all is well in avengers tower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long aaaaaaaaa i mean i finished writing this ages ago but just haven't gotten around to updating it fml,
> 
> warnings for dissociation, derealization, and the associated states of mind, as well as a panic attack or meltdown near the end.

Steve can't stop pacing, around and around and around in the kitchen, stocking feet skidding over tile. There's a mug of coffee cooling on the table, but he couldn't care less. His hands are deep in the pockets of his sweatpants, and he's so worked up that his shirt clings to his torso with sweat. He's not wearing his implant, so he doesn't notice Tony until they're face to face. 

"Hi," says Tony, like Captain America didn't almost knock him over. He pushes past Steve and makes for the coffee contraption. "You're up early." 

"Haven't slept since yesterday," Steve admits. 

Tony raises his eyebrows. "And I thought your boyfriend was finally okay." 

"He's not--" he starts, out of habit, but he stops himself before the words get very far. Steve retraces his steps to configure a reply. "Stark," he says, taking on that command voice he has, "do something that would prove this isn't a dream." 

Without a sound, Tony opens up the coffee machine and pulls out the old filter. He walks it over to the trash can and drops it in. That taken care of, he puts in a new filter and fresh coffee. He leans against the counter and watches Steve. 

"Too bad Bucky didn't see that." 

"What happened this time?" Tony's shoulders fall like he's exasperated, but his tone and face are friendly. There's a familiar quirk to his eyebrow that makes Steve sick to his stomach. Something twinkles in Tony's eyes. 

"I, um," Steve begins, stuttering. "We, uh, well, something kind of, um, happened and Bucky, he's--" 

"You wrote him a poem?" Tony guesses, arms folded across his chest. It's still a defensive pose. "You got down on one knee and proposed to him. You confessed your undying love for him with a tacky cake. You asked him to prom. What'd you do?" 

"I might've kissed him, a little." Steve's cheeks go glowing red. 

Tony whistles and slaps the counter. "Damn. I didn't think you had it in you." He's met with a venomous stare. 

"Now he thinks this isn't real." Steve gestures around the kitchen, arms making large arcs in the air. "All of this. He thinks he's dreaming." 

"Yeah, but I wouldn't change the filter in his dreams, either." 

Steve sighs. "He doesn't know that." 

Tony remains silent as he grabs his cup from the coffee machine, watching the steam bathe his face, downing half the mug in one long gulp. "Tell me everything." 

So Steve starts from the beginning. 

* 

"Steve," Bucky manages to say after a few long moments of silence. "I-I--" 

Steve covers his face with his hands, staring at his fingers. "I'm sorry. That was..." He rocks in place. "That was probably too much. I didn't mean to surprise you, I didn't--I just want you to be okay, and I'm sorry I put my--my feelings ahead of that." 

"Steve--" 

"I'm sorry, I should've told you. I should've told you years ago, or at least when you woke up. I shouldn't've just..." He takes a long and exasperated breath through his teeth. "I'm sorry." 

"Steve," says Bucky. 

"Don't apologize," he pleads. "Please don't apologize, you don't have to and I'm sorry." 

Bucky's arms are folded across his chest and he's tapping his foot on the floor. He rolls his eyes at Steve. "Thanks."

"I know, I--" Steve blinks and drops his hands, staring at Bucky. "What?" 

"Thank you," Bucky repeats with a hint of a smile. 

"Why?" 

"Because I never could've told you myself." He shrugs and steps forward. There's less than a foot between them. "Too damn scared. I was worried you'd feel bad 'cause that's how you are." His smile brightens a little. "It's another fucking thing that makes you special." 

"You--?" 

"Always." 

"Are you sure?" Steve edges around it. His fingers pick at the bottom hem of his shirt. "You don't remember everything yet--" 

"I remember you." Bucky meets Steve's eyes. It's hard to tell without visible pupils or irises, but it's a heavy feeling settling on his shoulders. "I remember holding your hand. S'why I thought I was dead when I saw you. I remember feeling so damn--" He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. "I was so goddamn jealous when everyone swarmed you afterwards. I noticed you first." 

"Bucky," says Steve. 

He steps closer again, so their chests are almost touching. Bucky puts a hand as heavy as the world on Steve's shoulder. "I'm saying sorry now 'cause I'm kinda out of practice." He leans forward, head tilted up, and catches Steve's lips in a kiss, a real kiss, gentler than before and more natural than just pressing their lips together. They stay there for a moment, chastely kissing, until Bucky starts to laugh. 

"What's so funny?" Steve asks defensively. 

"It's just that," Bucky starts, having to pause for breath. He's laughing off the edge, like he's about to fall down, a little over the top. "It's just that I was starting to think this wasn't a dream, too." 

"A dream?" Steve cocks his head. "What the hell are you talking about?" 

"I've had this one before, too. Guess the formula just changed a little. Used to be that I'd wake up and you'd be there and we'd be freezing our asses off on some beach and you'd take me home for medical leave." He sighs, looking at the ceiling. "And when we got home, it was normal for a little until you kissed me." 

"Bucky, this isn't a dream." 

He falls a hand dismissively at Steve. "Mhm, of course it isn't. You're s'posed to say that." Bucky smiles faintly, closing his eyes. "I just hope I can stay asleep a little longer." 

"Bucky," Steve insists, but he receives no answer. 

* 

"So you've made your boyfriend catatonic because he thinks you wouldn't kiss him in real life," Tony concludes. 

"Not boyfriend." Steve nods, though. "He doesn't get that I've dreamed about it, too." 

"Of course you have," says Tony with a gratuitous eye roll. "I can't think of someone who loves the same guy he did eighty years ago and doesn't dream about him." 

His face is red again. "I can't believe you said that." 

Tony shrugs. "I can't believe you actually kissed him, but it's just weird enough to make this not a dream." He smiles at Steve, all bright eyes and messy hair. 

Steve snorts. "You're one to talk." The echoes of slipping fingers and falling linger in his mind. He can almost hear the raspy dry winter leaves sound of Bucky's voice when he talked in the dream. There are cold fingers on his heart still. "Unless you have dreams about me and him." 

"Well, it would improve the general vibe of the tower. Especially if he moved to your floor! Then everything would be balanced like feng shui." 

It takes all his willpower, but Steve bites back the first comment that came to mind: "You're just like your dad. He used to dream about us kissing, too." He remains silent, looking back on long nights in whatever room was large enough to serve as a makeshift lab for Howard. Chatty, chatty Howard, who talked his ear off even when Steve couldn't understand what he was saying. Howard Stark, the only person in the world who knew about his feelings for Bucky. He briefly wonders if Bucky ever went to Howard for advice, or if he'd come forward first. 

Tony takes advantage of the silence, standing up and stretching. He finishes his cup of coffee and leaves it in the sink. "I'll see you around, Cap," he says; heading for the door. "Try and get some sleep, won't you?" He crosses the threshold and enters the elevator, disappearing when the doors close, leaving Steve alone with his thoughts. 

* 

The thing is, Steve rarely has good dreams about Bucky. 

Nightmares? Always. Bad dreams? Of course. Neutral moments? Every so often. It's been seventy years since he dreamed about Bucky kissing him. The interim is full of falling and losing grips and ice-cold water surrounding him. If Bucky kisses him in a dream, it's a distraction and Steve ends up with a knife in his back. Sometimes it's just a method of killing in its own right, pulling warmth and starlight out of Steve and breathing it in. Project Star-Eater. That's what They'd called him. 

Steve rolls over and over and over in his bed, looking from the floor to the ceiling to the wall against his bed; from the sheets to the door to the emptiness of an unused bedroom. He's too hot and too cold in turns, shivering without a blanket but melting when he rolls under a thin sheet. The illusion of cold, metal fingers and pulling, warping metal plates brush against his hands like moths dancing around a flame. 

This can't be a dream because Steve's dreams are so much worse. 

He ends up falling asleep--or knocking himself unconscious with restlessness--into a cold darkness that surrenders him after half a day. Nothing plays through his mind, but he wakes with the feeling of Bucky's cool, chapped lips against his own. Steve's hands curl into fists and he imagines they're each wrapped between someone else's fingers. 

It's nearly midnight, a couple hours past the time he usually shows up at Bucky's door, when Steve finally manages to force himself to sit up, rubbing salt grains of sleep from his eyes. His hands are sore. He stretches and leans against the wall, considering whether he should go back to sleep or not. Would Bucky even want to see him? Is he still convinced that everything's a dream? Or would it be better for Steve to leave him alone? 

The question answers itself as words suddenly appear, projected, on the wall beside Steve's head. “Captain Rogers,” they read in the Stark-copyrighted font JARVIS uses, “would you like to view the feed from Sergeant Barnes' room?” 

Steve groans out a “no,” and then a “why? Is everything okay?” 

The words clear and the lit patch of wall flickers for a few minutes. 

“Is Bucky alright?” he asks again, more insistently. 

“He is not doing well.” 

Steve bolts out of bed, barely taking the time to put on a shirt and sandals before he hits the elevator, willing it to go down faster, faster, faster so he can help (save) Bucky. All sorts of horrific scenarios play through his mind. He's able to rule out anything too immediate, any medical emergencies—if JARVIS could wait until Steve woke up, then it isn't something urgent. But if JARVIS persisted in waiting until Steve woke, then that meant there's some kind of problem and it isn't getting better. His mouth is dry when the elevator finally hits the lowest floor. Steve can count the milliseconds as the doors part, and he's through them as soon as he can fit. 

The retina scanner blinks at him, and he has difficulty keeping his eyes still. He's all nervous energy and anticipation, dread and a little bit of bright-hot terror. The door opens with a tangible click, and Steve enters the room beyond, trying to make himself look calmer than he actually is. It doesn't matter—Bucky can still see right through him—but it can't hurt to pretend he's composed. 

Steve scans the room and sees nothing but the undisturbed bed, the chair, nothing out of place except for a conspicuous lack of Bucky. His heart goes into overtime. “Bucky?” he asks, voice going half an octave up and breaking at the end. 

From behind the bed, a solitary arm appears and waves. Steve runs to it and crouches down at the end of the bed. Bucky lays in the corner, curled up as tightly as possible, arms wrapped around his knees pressed to his chest. His breathing is fast, panicked, and his starless eyes are wide. There's a faint sheen of cold sweat on his face. 

“Bucky,” Steve says. He doesn't get a reply, but that doesn't matter. “Touch okay?” A brief, clipped nod. Steve lays on his side, facing Bucky, and brushes hair out of his face. His hand lingers on Bucky's jaw, thumb smoothing over his cheek. He keeps his eyes low, only looks up at Bucky's when it's been a few moments since the last time they met eyes. 

Bucky remains completely silent. 

“What happened?” he asks, then shakes his head. What a useless question. “Do you want to talk about it?” A nod yes. “Can you talk about it?” Head shake no. “It's okay, I can wait. Do you want me to stay with you?” An emphatic, repeated nod. Steve stays where he is, side pressed to the cold concrete floor, eyes scanning over and over Bucky's trembling body. 

Slowly, slowly, the shivers subside and Bucky begins to uncurl. His limbs loosen and the blank panic on his face fades back into a neutral expression. Steve remains by his side, thumb gently stroking his cheek. After a little while, Bucky makes deliberate eye contact with Steve, nodding toward the bed. 

“Do you want me to carry you?” A nod. “You nerd.” 

Steve shifts into a crouch, then slides his arms under Bucky's back. He stands, carrying the other in a bridal style. First, he kicks the blanket to the foot of the bed so they're not laying on top of it. Then he lays Bucky down carefully, slowly. He pulls up the blanket once more and lays down beside Bucky. 

“Can you talk yet?” Head shake. “That's okay. I'll be here when you're ready to talk.” 

Bucky frowns, then looks at the ceiling for a minute. It's hard, but he manages to produce a spoken sentence: “It's real.” 

Steve's heart catches, suspended for a moment. “You mean this? Everything?” 

Bucky nods, then rolls over so he's laying on his stomach. He hides his face between his pillow and Steve's shoulder, silent once more. Steve tangles his fingers in long dark hair, absently picking out knots. He stares ahead, into the darkness, maybe smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's that and that's that 
> 
> ok so this is 4 my bf ven, like always, and my twinsies friend rae. also for bunny, bone, alex (birb), hiram, alex (bucky), foster, and all y'all viewers at home i love you

**Author's Note:**

> alternatively titled "hoo boy i sure do love dying and being dead and also being a black hole." 
> 
> yeah, most boring first chapter ever, i know, i know. it gets better though, i promise. these first couple chapters are kind of the condensed version of "some nights" but everyone is stars. 
> 
> as always dedicated to my positively celestial boyfriend ventus and my dear friend rae, who inspired this whole au. 
> 
> btw my fanfic blog is d0ct0rd0ct0r.tumblr.com and that's where i'll post about fun facts and weird tidbits and stuff.


End file.
